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Media and politicians 'fuel rise in hate crimes against Muslims'

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    Media and politicians 'fuel rise in hate crimes against Muslims'

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    Report blames 'Islamophobic, negative and unwarranted portrayals of Muslim London' for increase in attacks in the capital

    A rise in the number of hate crimes against Muslims in London is being encouraged by mainstream politicians and sections of the media, a study written by a former Scotland Yard counter-terrorism officer, published yesterday, says.

    Attacks ranging from death threats and murder to persistent low-level assaults, such as spitting and name-calling, are in part whipped up by extremists and sections of mainstream society, the study says.

    The document – from the University of Exeter's European Muslim research centre – was written by Dr Jonathan Githens-Mazer and former special branch detective Dr Robert Lambert.

    "The report provides prima facie and empirical evidence to demonstrate that assailants of Muslims are invariably motivated by a negative view of Muslims they have acquired from either mainstream or extremist nationalist reports or commentaries in the media," it says.

    Lambert headed Scotland Yard's Muslim contact unit, which helped improve relations between the police and Britain's Islamic communities.

    The unit won praise from even long-standing critics of the police, and Lambert was awarded an MBE.

    The study mentions no newspapers or writers by name, but alleges that the book Londonistan, by the Mail writer Melanie Phillips, played a part in triggering hate crimes.

    "Islamophobic, negative and unwarranted portrayals of Muslim London as Londonistan and Muslim Londoners as terrorists, sympathisers and subversives in sections of the media appear to provide the motivation for a significant number of anti-Muslim hate crimes," it says.

    In his foreword, the rightwing journalist Peter Oborne writes: "The constant assault on Muslims from certain politicians, and above all in the mainstream media, has created an atmosphere where hate crimes, ranging from casual abuse to arson and even murder, are bound to occur and are even in a sense encouraged by mainstream society."

    The report is based on interviews with witnesses to and victims of hate crimes, as well as police officers and former members of extremist organisations such as the British National Party.

    The report cites interviews with rightwing extremists to try to prove a link between what is published in the mainstream media and the anti-Muslim views held by extremists.

    It says: "An experienced BNP activist in London explains that he believes that most BNP supporters simply followed the lead set by their favourite tabloid commentators that they read every day.

    "When these commentators singled out Muslims as threats to security and social cohesion, he says that it was perfectly natural for BNP supporters to adopt the same thinking."

    The report says the extreme right are directing their violence more against Muslims than black or Asian Britons.

    "Interviewees with long experience of extremist nationalist street violence in London are unequivocal in their assessment that Muslim Londoners are now a prime target for serious violence and intimidation in the way that Londoners from minority ethnic communities once were," it says.

    "Similarly, interviewees with experience of London street gangs that have no connection or affinity with extremist nationalist politics are adamant that Muslims have become prime targets for serious attacks.

    "In addition, well-informed interviewees are clear that the main perpetrators of low-level anti-Muslim hate crimes are not gangs but rather simply individuals from a wide range of backgrounds who feel licensed to abuse, assault and intimidate Muslims in terms that mirror elements of mainstream media and political comment that became commonplace during the last decade."

    The report says the attacks come in part from street gangs targeting Muslims as punishment for members who have embraced Islam and left gang culture.

    "Often, they know someone who has left their scene and become a devout Muslim," the document, which also drew on interviews with youth workers dealing with gangs, says.

    "That is like a defection. And whether they do or don't, they say they know this or that terrorist who used to be a great person till he joined the Muslims."

    The report also says gang members believe Muslims values "oppose everything these kids aspire to. Flash cars, nightclubs, expensive clothes, jewellery, drugs, alcohol, casual sex, glamour, dancing, music ...".

    The study says the majority of hate crimes involve low-level incidentsand are not reported to police.

    Most officers are committed to tackling anti-Muslim hate crimes seriously, but are undermined by a few colleagues who are not. But the study warns: "Anti-Muslim hate crimes have not been afforded the same priority attention [that] government and police have invested in racist hate crimes."

    The report is dedicated to Yasir Abdelmouttalib, a PhD student who was left brain-damaged after a gang of youths attacked him in London, striking him over the head with a stick, as he made his way to a mosque while wearing Islamic clothing.

    It cites other cases of rightwing extremists preparing hate campaigns and of serious attacks on Muslims in Britain.

    These included: "Neil Lewington, a violent extremist nationalist convicted in July 2009 of a bomb plot; Terence Gavan, a violent extremist nationalist convicted in January 2010 of manufacturing nail bombs and other explosives, firearms and weapons; a gang attack in November 2009 on Muslim students at City University; the murder in September 2009 of Muslim pensioner, Ikram Syed ul-Haq; a serious assault in August 2007 on the Imam at London Central Mosque; and an arson attack in June 2009 on Greenwich Islamic Centre."

    The study focuses on anti-Muslim violence in London, with its authors saying they will produce one covering the whole of the UK by this summer.

    muslims460 1 - Media and politicians 'fuel rise in hate crimes against Muslims'
    Muslims at an east London mosque: a report has blamed sections of the media and politicians for a rise in anti-muslim hate crimes. Photograph: Odd Andersen/AFP/Getty Images
    Media and politicians 'fuel rise in hate crimes against Muslims'


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    Re: Media and politicians 'fuel rise in hate crimes against Muslims'

    Muslims in the UK: beyond the hype

    Our new centre for the study of Muslims in Europe will look past the fear-mongering headlines, to real lives

    Jonathan Githens-Mazer and Robert Lambert

    Today, we are proud to launch the European Muslim Research Centre (EMRC) at the University of Exeter. We hope that the EMRC will be part of a wider process of voices and perspectives which are too often being ignored, or buried under a tide of negative portrayals of Muslim communities and Islam by vociferous sections of the media and populist politicians.

    What good is an academic centre on these kinds of issues? The EMRC has taken a first step towards highlighting problems which Muslims are facing on a daily basis. We've looked at cases like that of Yasir Abdelmouttalib. Six years ago Yasir, a young Moroccan, was nearly killed while waiting to take a bus from Willesden to Regent's Park in London. Dressed in traditional Islamic white robes to go to his Friday prayers, this young PhD student was minding his own business, when he was set upon by a gang. After a "barrage of spitting", the gang attacked him and one gang member beat his head with a street broom so badly that his brain was dislodged and his skull had multiple fractures. Yasir was left in a coma for three months.

    What had Yasir done to deserve these injuries? He had no political cause. He wasn't protesting, he wasn't trying to make any point in wider society. He was a young man, waiting for a bus so he could pray. So what made it OK to beat a man's brains out for no good reason?

    Earlier this month Terence Gavan, a former BNP member, was convicted of manufacturing a huge array of firearms and explosives, ranging from nail-bombs and machine guns to a rocket launcher. Gavan claimed that he had a "fascination with things that go bang", but others highlight that he felt he had to defend his fellow countrymen fighting Muslims in foreign lands. Gavan wasn't on the counter-terrorist radar – the spotlight of attention wasn't focused on him, but on Muslims as a threat to Britain, rather than British threats to Muslims.

    Two cases ranging over six years – but more than isolated incidents in modern Britain. Just ask Mohammed Kohelee, the heroic caretaker who suffered burns to his body while trying to prevent an arson attack against Greenwich Mosque last June. Or look at the murder last September of Tooting pensioner Ekram Haque. Haque was brutally beaten to death in front of his three year old granddaughter by a "race-hate" gang. Or ask the police officers injured this past weekend during an English Defence League (EDL) march in Stoke. In 2010, British Muslims face physical peril for simply being Muslim.

    Our Centre's first report, "Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Hate Crime: a London case study" is out today. Too much academic and "thinktank" research is based on poor methodological engagement, and repackaging hearsay and assumption in the guise of intellectual contribution. We hope that the EMRC, in partnership with communities and other academics will provide an alternative to this kind of work.

    As part of this, our centre will engage not only with Muslim communities, but also policy-makers and organisations such as the police. As those police officers remind us in today's report, this kind of violence isn't happening in a vacuum – and is more than the actions of a few mindless thugs. Politicians, ranging from the fringes of UKIP and the BNP, to serious mainstream politicians in the Labour and Conservative parties, not only feel that there is no social or political penalty for attacking Islam, but that not attacking Muslims enough risks being politically outflanked. Politicians are making regular political assessments that it's a vote-winner to call for the proscription of Hizb-ut-Tahrir rather than the EDL – despite the fact the EDL has organised a string of marches which have led to police officers being injured and civil unrest.

    This behaviour is egged on by populist commentators in the tabloids and beyond, who sensationalise stories to gain print space and air time. They constantly highlight the activities of an incredibly small part of the Muslim community, without ever once considering how the toxic atmosphere they are creating endangers Muslims who lead average non-violent lives. Britons everywhere are fed a diet of the threat of Islam, of concerns about "Islamic extremism", "Islamic radicalisation", and a lack of cultural integration.

    These reductionist and populist portrayals of Muslims in Britain don't do our society any credit. Politicians need to be braver – and reject cheap votes for real political engagement. Shouldn't politicians actually credit the British public with being a resilient people – intelligent and fair, willing to discuss serious issues in adult ways? The incredibly base nature of the depiction of Muslims by popular Islamophobic commentators betrays more about their personal fears and ingrained prejudices than their desire to make Britain a better place. Who contributes more to British society, the tabloid fear-monger, or the Muslim community anti-war activist?

    In the end Terence Gavan was sentenced to 11 years in prison. Yasir Abdelmouttalib miraculously survived – though his recovery continues slowly. The failed arsonists at Greenwich Mosque still roam free, and Tooting suffered a spate of anti-Muslim violence. When violence against Muslims stems from thinking childishly, about personal political gain and populist exploitation of fear rather than the betterment of all sections of society, shouldn't we put such childish thoughts aside and make room for real adult political engagement and debate?

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    Media and politicians 'fuel rise in hate crimes against Muslims'


    "I spent thirty years learning manners, and I spent twenty years learning knowledge."

    ~ 'Abdullāh bin al-Mubārak (rahimahullah)
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    Re: Media and politicians 'fuel rise in hate crimes against Muslims'

    Media and politicians 'fuel rise in hate crimes against Muslims'


    "I spent thirty years learning manners, and I spent twenty years learning knowledge."

    ~ 'Abdullāh bin al-Mubārak (rahimahullah)
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    Re: Media and politicians 'fuel rise in hate crimes against Muslims'

    I met many brits in lebanon . They are always angry about the situation in england they say that the government is So easy going with everybody and that foreigners are taking over their jobs and that they hate how the government allows all the civil protests specially muslim ones. And really the brits i met are So racist and they say it , that they hate the blacks the polish and muslims. And its true what you said that media is lubricating this violance.
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    Re: Media and politicians 'fuel rise in hate crimes against Muslims'

    Being anti-muslim isn't racist, as Islam is not a race. And being against particular ideologies or religions actually makes a lot of sense if they conflict with your values. We don't call anti-satanists racists. We shouldn't call anti-muslims or anti-jewish racists either. Also keep in mind that many, if not most religions themselves teach that other religions are evil, which is then quite an amusing irony if they claim to be the victims of "racism".
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    Re: Media and politicians 'fuel rise in hate crimes against Muslims'

    The people i met said that they are racist against muslims , polish , blacks were just average people .So to describe the hate inside them they stated that they are racist . Next time i will teach them the new term of being an anti muslim. I will tell them hey lads if you hate muslims use another term lets keep racism for blacks and lets try islamo phobic . cause maybe the term islamo phobic is not well marketed. you know that hate is just hate if you say i'm racist , islamo phobic or anti muslims .
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    Re: Media and politicians 'fuel rise in hate crimes against Muslims'

    format_quote Originally Posted by Getoffmyback View Post
    I met many brits in lebanon . They are always angry about the situation in england they say that the government is So easy going with everybody and that foreigners are taking over their jobs and that they hate how the government allows all the civil protests specially muslim ones. And really the brits i met are So racist and they say it , that they hate the blacks the polish and muslims. And its true what you said that media is lubricating this violance.
    lol that is funny, their such racists, yet they love to constantly visit a middle-eastern country filled with Muslims and very different people with different culture, food, and language.
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    Re: Media and politicians 'fuel rise in hate crimes against Muslims'

    hatersgonnahate 1 - Media and politicians 'fuel rise in hate crimes against Muslims'
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    Re: Media and politicians 'fuel rise in hate crimes against Muslims'

    format_quote Originally Posted by Pygoscelis View Post
    Being anti-muslim isn't racist, as Islam is not a race. And being against particular ideologies or religions actually makes a lot of sense if they conflict with your values. We don't call anti-satanists racists. We shouldn't call anti-muslims or anti-jewish racists either. Also keep in mind that many, if not most religions themselves teach that other religions are evil, which is then quite an amusing irony if they claim to be the victims of "racism".
    The issue is not about disagreeing with an ideology or religion but about sheer hatred, which will lead to violence. I'm extremely anti-atheism, but I would never hurt innocent and harmless atheists.
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    Re: Media and politicians 'fuel rise in hate crimes against Muslims'

    Greetings and peace be with you Uthmān my friend;

    We read about all the bad stuff, but how can we make a difference?

    Christians are starting to work together out on the streets late at night, through an initiative called Street Pastors. Maybe Muslims need something similar, but my hopes and prayers would be for some kind of interfaith cooperation, whereby Muslims, Christians, Hindu and all others could work together.

    I have been a Street Pastor for two years now, and it is such a wonderful ministry, here is a short video on Street Pastors,

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRuP3ySm8cI&NR=1

    In the spirit of searching for One God.

    Eric
    Media and politicians 'fuel rise in hate crimes against Muslims'

    You will never look into the eyes of anyone who does not matter to God.
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