How is Islamophobia affecting the UK?

In this episode, we discuss some statistics that show just how serious Islamophobia is in the UK, and explore the context and effects of that. This episode is quite heavy, with references to hate crime.

Articles discussed this month are:
'Anti-Muslim hate at record level in UK, report says'
'Poll suggests growing fear among Muslim women in the UK'

If you have a question for us, then you can submit it through this form.

Music used is:
Who Do You Think I Think You Are? by Mini Vandals 

Transcript

H: Welcome back to another episode of D&I Digest. I'm Henry, I use he/they pronouns. 

T: And I'm Teagan, and I use she/her pronouns.

H: We make up the Diversity and Inclusion team at Anchor, which is an organisation that specialises in housing and care for over 55s. So this month we're looking at Islamophobia and  anti-Muslim sentiment and how that's affecting the UK which is  obviously a huge topic  so we're  probably not going to cover all of the ways that that is happening  in one episode but the aim of today is just to kind of start the conversation and hopefully prompt a few people to kind of delve a little bit deeper into it because, like previous conversations, it's one of those ones where once you tug very lightly at one thread, everything unravels.

T: Yeah, it does.

H: So yeah, have you like encountered this before?

T: Yes, absolutely.

H: Yeah, I think that's a really obvious answer.

T: It really is. So whilst I grew up in a very white working class town where I think I was one of three Black families in it, I wasn't surrounded by a vast amount of multiculturalism. However, I then went to  university in Leeds and then subsequently moved out to Bradford which I've proudly called home for the last eight years and the difference in terms of multiculturalism is massive compared to what I've experienced growing up. I love it. I've never felt more at home being around so much diversity. It really aligns with my values, who I am. But with that means that I've also witnessed some pretty horrible things happen to, particularly, Muslim women. And  I think we do have a real and increasing problem in this country with anti-muslim sentiment in particular. And I'll be honest, I'm not really looking forward to having this conversation today, but it's an important one.

H: Yeah, likewise, yeah.

T: You know, we're not coming from a place of lived experience with this at all. But we do both understand the gravitas of the situation and the growing importance in having this conversation.

H: Yeah, and I think actually this, on that note, this is a really important one because I got a very lovely email the other day from Spotify saying that you can now comment on podcast episodes. So because we're not coming from a place of lived experience on this one,  if anybody who's listening does we would really really love to hear what you've to say on this or opinions, personal experiences, if  that's the thing that you would like to share it would be really nice to  open this topic in particular  up to  people who it does affect and who do have that lived experience. But yeah no I'm somewhat similar when I was growing up, I mean, originally from Hampshire, which is not known for being the most diverse of places. When I came up to University in York, which is also quite, quite white. There were lots of people who looked like me around. And then kind of similar to you, I moved to Leeds and was like, wow, this is great. Like I can see people who don't look like me and that's really nice.  And then yeah, subsequently kind of moved  further over  to Bradford and  just kind of escalates really, but  in a really, really positive way because I think it's only quite recently that I've been consciously working to kind of find out a bit more and like beyond the college RS lessons on Islam, but yeah it's been a relatively recent development for me and my learning so it's been really nice to kind of have almost like an immersive feature of it and kind of be like well now I've got to learn because otherwise I'm going to be awful to people and I need to not do that.

T: Yeah absolutely I like that idea of immersing yourself in a brand new culture and what a privilege to be able to learn from the people around you.

H: Exactly yeah! 100%

T: I think that's amazing yeah you can go out and do the research yourself that's great but you can actually ask someone who's got real lived experience of belonging to that community and that religion which is much better than reading things on Wikipedia, let's be honest!

H: Yeah, definitely! It's been quite nice as well because, I mean, I am a big reader, we all know this.

T: Yes!

H: And I have, like, read kind of various bits and pieces on it but it's been nice to be able to talk those through with somebody afterwards and be like, oh is this a universal experience? Is this very specific to this one person? And yeah, and generally they've been really nice conversations to have as well, which has been lovely.

T: What was that book that you were reading not too long back where it was different short stories but I'm pretty sure you told me that they were from women who were belonging to the Muslim faith.

H: Was it 'It's Not About the Burqa'?

T: Yes, yeah, yeah, that was it. That's right.

H: It different essays, it was all non-fiction. That was the book that I kind of did a bit of like delving into and then asked a lot of questions after, it was a really good book. Very interesting perspectives that were coming out.

T: I can imagine.

H: And as well like I've discovered so much in terms of like really obvious stuff as well like legal things that I was just like never really needed to think about that before and kind of hearing it from someone who has; very interesting. Would really recommend that book.

MUSIC

H: Our first article today is from the BBC and it's from February this year, and it's called "Anti-Muslim Hate is at a Record Level in the UK, report says". So this year, Tell Mama, which is an organisation tracking anti-Muslim incidents, has reported almost 6,000 reports, which is more than double that number two years ago.

T: Wow.

H: So what you were saying in the introduction about it being on the increase. Definitely true. The in-person cases, as opposed to the online ones, saw a 72% increase since two years ago with the majority of those cases taking place in public areas with a minority occurring in the workplace. So yeah, the numbers on this whole article are staggering.

T: Yeah. I'm not surprised though. I think people are being quite bold in their bigotry at the moment and I think that's because they've been allowed to be. 

H: Yeah, it's been vindicated to an extent, hasn't it?

T: Absolutely, and I think, I'm sure we'll come on to talk about it, but it's things like last August with the far-right riots. People felt really emboldened  to go out and do that because  realistically the consequences are not proportional to the amount of destruction that that causes on the other side of it in people's lives. So  I think it's a really  precarious time in our society around how we talk about multiculturalism, how we talk about gender identity, how we talk about anything that sits under the so-called woke umbrella.

H: Yeah. Anything that's possible to be othered.

T: Yes, totally. And I think that that's why we're seeing, like I say, some people, and I do still believe they are a minority of people-

H: A hundred percent.

T: I really do believe that, feel so bold in their bigotry, but that does not make it feel any less  violent and obvious and escalating in what we see in our streets on a day-to-day basis and apparently in work too. Love that, great. 

H: Yeah, and like, I mean the first bit of this, again it did actually surprise me, it was- I don't know- a weird mix of being surprised and not, but the fact that the majority of these cases are happening in public areas. So again, just kind of what you were saying about people feeling really emboldened because it's allowed, essentially, but in the workplace as well because, I mean, at least personally, I feel a little bit more secure in a workplace because I know that there are things put in place to protect me from discrimination that  don't necessarily exist on the street, for example. 

T: Sure.

H: So yeah, I was a bit like, well it makes sense. Like I understand why that workplace statistic is so high, but also that's really sad to see because that's the place where you should have that protection. I mean you should have it everywhere obviously but like it feels, often, a bit more explicit in the workplace because it's got to be. So yeah that kind of phrasing of it caught me off guard, I think that's probably a better word than saying I was surprised. 

T: Sure. 

H: Yeah. These reports also found that more men than women were the targets of anti-racism for the first time since it was founded in 2012 as well. So previously to now women have been the targets for this, whereas that's switched this year. The organisation said that there has been a surge in rhetoric that falsely portrays Muslims as terrorists or terrorist sympathizers following the Israel-Gaza conflict and the Southport murders. So, yeah, what we said.

T: Yeah.
H: According to the report, more than half of the online incidents took place after the Southport murders and the majority took place on X. Which, can't say I'm surprised about that.

T: No, not surprised at that, I mean, please.

H: "Cesspit" is the word we've used before?

T: I think that's accurate, yes. Just go and listen to the episode about social media.

H: Oh yeah.

T: I think you'll have a very clear view of what both me and Henry think about X.

H: Yes, absolutely. So the last kind of bit of this article is from Iman Atta, Tell Mama's director, saying that the public must stand together against hatred and extremism.  And she urged those in positions of influence to consider how their language risks stereotyping communities  and how it unduly influences discussions online and offline.

T: Hear hear.

H: Yeah, really well said.

T: Absolutely. I'd almost argue that there's still a general level of uncomfortableness around talking about Islamophobia and I mean we, me and you, had an interesting conversation didn't we about the phrasing of Islamophobia as well. 

H: Yeah, that also came from a rabbit hole with these articles.

T: Yeah, and I think what we're actually talking about is more akin to that anti-Muslim rhetoric, sentiment.

H: Yeah. So for background, the discourse that I encountered in my rabbit hole was essentially saying that  Islamophobia, the word, kind of the semantics of it, is to do with criticising a religion; anti-Muslim bigotry or anti-Muslim sentiment is more targeted at people. 

T: Yes, of course.

H: So it  was just that. Yeah, it was quite a semantic distinction but an important one I think in, definitely in some situations.

T: Yes absolutely, because I do think the distinction is important because I have heard  people spew anti-Muslim rhetoric but I've also heard from people who have a direct criticism of Islam so there is a difference isn't there, we are potentially talking about two types of situation.

H: Yes. And also the situation which I've heard before is "I don't have a problem with the religion but the people" and it's like it's interesting, I say interesting in a very loose sense of the word, how it can be split in order to justify bigotry.

T: I mean, the same example that I always use when we're talking about  this argument in particular, like "Oh you know it's not necessarily the teachings of the religion, it's the people," kind of thing? Well we never really seem to have this conversation around the KKK though do we? 

H: Yeah.

T: Famously Christian group of people, yeah. When we talk about that we're not talking about separating people from the religion. So why do we then end up down this rabbit hole when we're talking about people who are Muslim. I'll tell you why.  Racism.

H: I was going to say because you never hear it about white Muslims either. 

T: No.

H: It's very rarely that, well, in the conversations that I've had, which admittedly this isn't, I don't really tend to talk to bigots if I can help it, but it's never really something that you see on the news if they're white Muslims and you never kind of hear aspersions of them being  labelled as a terrorist or extremist groups or anything.

T: Not all. There was a recent incident with, and again this is me spending time online, it was, I don't think it was actually captured in any of national news. For those of you that are not familiar with West Yorkshire, there is a famous pub crawl in Leeds called the Otley Run, popular with many students and visitors from all up and down country. I have frequented a few times myself. Anyway, there was a man who took a crossbow and a selection of other weaponry  out on the Otley Run a couple of weeks ago and  injured two women.  Before he had gone out and done this, he had said online what he was going to do.  He had said that  it was because he was a misogynist, it was because he was X, Y, Z, whatever. All for everyone to see.  Didn't get caught until it was too late. Obviously injured some people not life-threatening I'm pleased to say. Go online, was the conversation about if he's Christian or what religion he belongs to or anything like that? No, no, no, no, no, you will get questions around, you know, maybe this person was unwell-

H: Yeah, it's sympathetic isn't it? 

T: Absolutely, absolutely it is.

H: It's a lot more understanding. Yeah, or wanting to understand, desperately trying to find a feature to humanise someone.

T: White people who go out and commit heinous crimes.

H: Yes.

T: Absolutely tale as old as time and that's the difference here, isn't it? When people are having conversations about, you know, "It's not the religion that I'm against, it's the people, it's the terrorists." No,  this is a conversation  when it all comes down to it, as far as I'm concerned, about ethnicity. 

H: Yeah, I wish especially given like the current climate of the UK generally but I think more widely of the world, I wish I could say I was expecting better in terms of zeros  because  I think this is another thing that I always have to remind myself  with these sorts of statistics is that one is a bad number to have.

T: Absolutely.

H: And you often see it with statistics like this where it's like, "Oh I know this has gone down in recent years!" and it's like yeah well it's still on like 60 percent that's still horrific like zero is a good number in this situation exactly that so 72?

T: That is-

H: That is ridiculous, and that's the increase as well like-

T: That's awful

H: Yeah but I think what Iman Atta is saying about the kind of the way that we talk about people generally but I think what she said in terms of  the way that people in positions of influence are talking about, especially in this case, Muslim people then, yeah, I think definitely justifies stereotypes and  exacerbates a problem that  really didn't need exacerbating in the first place.

T: No, not at all. Not at all.

MUSIC

H: The second article is from ITV, which I don't think we've had one from ITV before.

T: I don't think we have actually. Lots of BBCs.

H: It's not quite as impressive as that random footballing magazine from the other day. I'm still impressed by that one. This article is from ITV  and it's called, "Poll suggests growing fear among Muslim women in the UK." So it kind of brings the statistics of the first article to life a little bit.

T: Okay.

H: It discusses an online poll commissioned by the charity Islamic Relief. So it polls 507 Muslims, very specific number, in the UK which found that 30% did not feel safe going out at night and over 50% said that politicians in the UK had made them feel less welcome. Heena Khan, who's someone from London, said, "You have to shut yourself off from it, and build a kind of wall to separate the emotion from the facts, but even with that wall up, it still chips away at you. Over time it makes you feel small. You start to question how safe you really are in this country or whether you truly belong here."

T: Yeah, mean is that not some of the most bleakest stuff we've ever read out on this podcast?

H: Yeah, 100%.

T: Because it's true, I've heard it in my lifetime. I am a second generation immigrant in this country. I've heard the phrase "go back to your own country" more times than I care to remember and I just look at them like, I was born at Bassett Law Hospital down the road.

H: I love that you said that with the most northern accent possible as well.

T: I was born here! But the thing is there is like I maybe had that as some sort of shield, I guess. I mean, it didn't take away from the scary reality of what I was facing at the time.

H: Yeah, of course.

T: But for me, I know that I haven't grown up anywhere else. I was born here. That's just my reality. For people who have come here, I cannot imagine the state of anxiety that must exist within them of the idea of someone looking at you being, you know, "go back to your own country. You don't belong here". They're just a constant reminder that you don't belong somewhere. It's so damaging. Really, really, really damaging.
H: Yeah, the 50% saying that it was politicians that made them feel less welcome as well, I think-

T: Yeah, shocking.

H: What Iman Atta was saying in the first article about the people of influence need to be very careful about how you're talking to your country because it is their country as much as anybody else.

T: Of course it is, because you know, immigration only starts in one place doesn't it? You have a family that come over and then all the children subsequently are born here, much like in my case. So we're talking about swathes of people here that have only ever known this country, only ever known this country, constantly told that they don't belong here, for whatever reason and that reason is anti-Muslim sentiment. And like you say, the idea that that's then being perpetuated by the people elected into government.

H: Shameful, isn't it?

T: It's absolutely shameful. What do you do with that? Where do you go? What happens next? When the people who were supposed to be representing you, enacting policies, making your country better, don't? In fact, actively making it worse. 

H: Yeah. So additionally, more than a quarter of Muslims stopped using social media entirely as a result of the abuse and harmful content that they'd seen online. Can't say I'm surprised by that given  social media conversation, which we won't have again.

T: Yeah.
H: The experts say that this has been driven by changes to social media algorithms, which I thought was an interesting connotation that we've already mentioned. Go and have a look at our social media episode.

T: Yeah, exactly. We've said this, haven't we? This is what happens when you decide that you're going to label bigotry as free speech, but there you go.

H: There we go. It said that it had been driven by algorithms, the South Port murders and the Israel-Gaza conflict. Yes. But where it said, "experts say this," didn't have a source on ITV, so I couldn't actually check it. Tufail Hussain, who is the UK director of Islamic Relief,  said that, "People increasingly feel that they can post malicious and hateful content without any consequences. Social media has become a dangerous space for false news in which organisations such as Islamic Relief are subjected to hateful abuse. This survey's a wake-up call for the UK government to do everything it can to make the Muslim community feel safe, and for tech companies to tackle hate speech and protect users online." Likewise, Dr Naomi Green, who's the Assistant Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain, said that "the findings were more evidence of the mainstreaming of Islamophobia. Online spaces and weaponised algorithms like Musk's X (Twitter) have become wastelands of abuse and misinformation towards Muslims and other vulnerable groups that is dragging our society into even darker spaces."

T: Yeah, absolutely, I think there are several things that need to happen. One of them is some very clear laws around social media use and consequences for those who treat social media like a place to just spew their absolute bile onto the rest of the world. And recognise that actually what you say does have real life consequences for everyone.

H: Yeah, no matter how anonymous you might think you are being, it's still hitting a person on the other side of it.

T: Absolutely. So I think yes, that needs to happen. There does need to be a recognition at government level around the increasing problem that we've got at the moment and they need to be able to tackle that rhetoric now. That becomes slightly more difficult when you listen to  what the Prime Minister's recently been saying, you know, literally quoting people like Enoch Powell with anti-immigration rhetoric which then starts to cascade into racism that exists in the country, then that sort of feeds the anti-Muslim rhetoric.

H: It's big vicious cycle isn't it?

T: It is. It all feeds into each other so yes whilst he might just be talking about immigration, it's a bigger conversation with that because it's how the UK perceives who is an immigrant.

H: Yes exactly and who "belongs" in inverted commas and who doesn't.

T: Correct. So yeah, there's gotta be some recognition at government level. Not sure who's gonna do that and how that's gonna go.  The third thing I think is  people need to  get out of their own way and experience  the benefits of living in  a diverse world.

H: Yeah.

T: I think that fear drives people a lot of the time. And I think when people don't understand something, when they have no knowledge of it, when they have never been presented with it, grown up with it, familiar with it, all of that stuff, it creates this fear in their brain. and the only way that they  then  let that manifest is then through bigotry.  So we have to then start to challenge some of that fear and those perceptions that people have.  And the only way that they can do that effectively is to get out of their own way and actually go and speak to people and see life. But that's easier said than done isn't it?

H: Yeah it's annoying that you've got to rely on those people to do that themselves because it's not generally the kind of thing that people self-select to do that.

T: And I think this becomes more difficult when you look at adults because there's not many places apart from a workplace where you can start to introduce things like D&I programs so people think bit differently. However, what we do have is the ability to change curriculum in schools.

H: Yeah, and you can start it right at the beginning.

T: Start it right at an early age. You talk to these children about the idea of living in a world where people are different.

H: Yeah, cause also that has a knock on effect to their parents.

T: Of course it does.

H: And, one would assume, that would have a knock on effect to the parents' friends, families, relations, whatever. Yeah, so there is huge power in educating children.

T: Yes, there is. And I've seen first-hand how your views and your values then start to affect the people around you. The perceptions of people that I've spent a lot of time with have probably changed and morphed over the years because of the job that I do. So it does, it happens via osmosis! if you teach one person how to be respectful of people's differences and care a little bit more about looking for those differences and celebrating them and enjoying them, that will then naturally start to affect the people in their lives. And then you're then passing that on as well. Obviously that doesn't affect the current issue but the current issue needs to be tackled, like I've already said, at government level and in a sort of legislative fashion around social media. And actually, you know, hate crime's basically non-existent at this point in that nobody's picking up on it are they so no one's getting you know six months suspended sentence for any hate crime

H: Yeah, there's no, like, consequence for it.

T: Yeah, unless it's then turns into something far more violent like physical violence anything before that no one seems to care no one's bothered. So what then? You know, like where are we? Because  if you can't rely on the people who are supposed to be enforcing the laws, and then you can't rely on the government to make you feel like you're someone who belongs here because you are someone who's not respected in this country for your beliefs  and your ethnicity,  I will say, because that's an important factor here. So what then?

H: Yeah, it kind of leaves you with nothing, doesn't it? And it also perpetuates that otherness because  you're left with no community other than other than your own community,  which only fuels that kind of idea of, "Ah, but people don't integrate," and, you know, "If we could talk to people, then there wouldn't be a problem," and it's like, well, no, that's been prevented actively. And I use that word deliberately, because Prevent is half the problem as well. Like, the number of referrals that label someone "terrorist," then it just exacerbates a problem because you've got that, what's it called, visibility bias?

T: Yeah yeah yeah. That's an interesting sidebar though around Prevent and how that came in as anti-terrorist prevention, and how that's then taught in schools and people who are  working closely with vulnerable adults and children  and all the safeguarding training that you go through if you're not familiar, give it a Google, it's interesting actually. The point of it is around terrorism in all aspects. However, disproportionately targeted at mostly young Muslim boys. 

H: Yeah. Could you imagine if that was a different religion? Like you don't hear it with anything else. I mean, there are reasons for that, like historically but like-

T: Yeah, absolutely.

H: Not good reasons but reasons that's the narrative that's perpetuated.

T: Yeah absolutely, I think there are two things that stick out in my mind. The first one is Israeli-Gaza conflict that's been going on way longer than October 7th. Again I would really urge people to understand a lot of the history around that. And then also we've got 9-11. Which was a large factor of why I think this type of bigotry started, if I'm honest, and then was shaped and emboldened again by a UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair at the time, when we then decided that we were going to go support the US in the invasion of Iraq. So I think someone,  somewhere has got to start unpicking this because I fear that it becomes an even bigger problem than what we've got. 

H: Yeah.

T: And yeah, it needs someone at the highest level to kind of wrap its arms around it now and get a grip of the problem.
H: Yeah  and  similar to what we were talking about in  the previous episode around kind of understanding where the stereotypes come from so that you can then respond effectively to them, I think in this context specifically, all of those  assumptions, stereotypes,  ideas,  unfounded ideas have been left to solidify and been sewn into this rhetoric for that long. Like you need an industrial sized unpicker for that logic.

 T: It's just there seems to be an inability to see past a select group of people's serious extremism versus talking about an entire religion and the people who belong to it in the same way that I brought up the KKK earlier. Don't go around and every Christian you meet go, "Oof, so-"

H: "I'm just a bit nervous because-" 

T: "Are you part of the KKK then?" Would never happen. So what's the difference?

H: Yeah.

T: The fundamental difference is ethnicity. That for me is the crux of it. I think that's the underlying current that runs through all of this conversation for me is that it's always about a visible difference and those visible differences are usually the colour of your skin and if you're a Muslim woman that wears religious clothing, religious items. 

H: Yeah. To cyclically link back to what we were saying at very beginning, the book 'It's Not About the Burqa' mentions that a lot, because it's all  Muslim women who are writing these essays and a really consistent theme throughout is whether or not someone is wearing a headscarf and whether or not someone chooses to wear a headscarf and why they made that decision  which is really really interesting because a couple of those essays were saying like "I chose not to because of the looks that I would get, because of the assumptions."
So that visible difference, I think, is a really big one. So again, I was talking to someone the other day about this, and they kind of mentioned that often Sikh men get lumped in with, I don't want say Islamophobia because it's not obviously Islamophobia, but they kind of get pulled into the conversation because someone assumes a visible difference makes everyone the same.

T: Does that not just drive the point though that it's not really about whether you're a Muslim or not? 

H: Yeah, exactly.

T: It's about whether you are different.

H: Yep. 

T: So I think until, to sort of bring a close to all of this, I think there are three main things that need to happen. It's one around media, it's one around government, and it's one around how we're teaching people to respect differences.

H: I feel like we could just take those three things and apply them to every podcast episode we've ever done.

T: That's so true. So true. But I do think there's something to be said about  allowing a space for people to bring their lived experience to it as well. And creating a safe space for them. And it's not within our gift to do it at a government level but it is in a lot of people's gifts that are probably listen to this podcast to do it in two places: work and home.

H: Yeah.

T: So, that is my takeaway that is my urge for people listening to this or coming across this on socials, is just spend a bit of time looking into why it's such an issue and then think about what you're going to do to combat that in your space, in your world. Because you can only control that. But that's my request and that's my ask I think. 

MUSIC

H: Well thank you for joining us for this episode of D &I Digest, I hope it's been interesting to listen to, if a bit bleak to hear, but hopefully that's rallied some people to go and do some research and question things, if nothing else.

T: Yeah, I think you're right. I think it's been an opportunity to lift the lid on something that maybe is not getting spoken about all that much,  present people with the facts of what's actually happening, who it's affecting,  and maybe, just maybe,  it'll then trigger something for people to go away and do a bit further digging.
H: Yeah, the articles that we'll link in the box below, really good starting points. they've got some quite good links to other places, other resources as well, so yeah, I really recommend checking those out.  Other than that though, remember that you can follow us on our website and on social media  and we hope that you'll come back in and listen next month, so it's bye from me.

T: And bye from me.

Both: Bye!