Since Jack Straw’s comments exactly a decade ago, the Niqab has been in political debate which at times have become heightened. Currently, there are reports that the Prime Minister is considering a ban on the veil in schools, courts and other public institutions. No doubt, the Niqab will become the subject of much debate over the coming months.

In light of this, very rarely do women who wear the veil have the chance to speak about the impacts of people’s prejudices against them. How many newspaper reports, when reporting on political developments about the Niqab, have then interviewed women who choose to wear the veil. Very few have and in fact, we can’t recollect seeing a Niqab wearer being approached by news outlets when discussing the topic recently.

We want to highlight the other side of the coin – the fact that women who wear the Niqab are subject to prejudice, aggression and open hatred at points. It is also important to note that over the last 4 years of work within Tell MAMA, it is clear that women who wear the Niqab suffer more incidents of anti-Muslim hatred and more aggressive incidents of anti-Muslim hatred, including assault.

These are the words of a Muslim woman who wears the Niqab and who recounted her experiences for us.

“I’m worried about the day my 7 year old daughter suddenly tunes into the daily abuse, realises it’s her mother that these respectable-looking strangers – maybe parents of her schoolfriends during pick-up or drop-off, maybe the people behind us in the supermarket queue – are talking about / to.

“And what do I tell her? I’ve brought her up to believe people of all faiths are equally worthy of respect; the majority of her schoolfriends are Hindu or Christian. How can I explain to her that these people hate me because of the visible clues to my faith – particularly my outfit? Me, who taught my little girl that she should never care what other people thought about her appearance, to be proud of her mixed-race looks and unique dress sense (we’re talking Cinderella ball gown with trackie bottoms, or Batman cape over Hello Kitty dress).

“What if she’s ashamed to be seen with her mother? What if she’s angry with these strangers for hating on her mother, starts believing non-Muslims are abusive bad people who hate Muslims? What if she develops a fear of white strangers instead of her beautiful trademark confidence and friendliness? What if she’s present when the trolley-shoving, the jostling, the swearing, escalates into a more vicious kind of physical violence? There’s only so much verbal abuse and sly jostling/ shoving I can take passively before I turn round and tell them to have some manners.

“I’ve had women my mum’s age making explosion sounds at me and calling me ISIS, men my age telling me I’m disgusting, women younger than me telling me to f*** off back to Saudi. I’ve been called terrorist, dirty scum, f***** freak, Islamic whore, brown c********, Arab f****, Jihadi b*****…… All in front of my 7-year-old daughter. I had a trolley rammed into my belly when I was pregnant; it was after a bunch of skinheads made knife gestures at me that I stopped going out by myself until I gave birth and no longer felt like a walking target as a pregnant niqabi. I’m pretty confident that I could defend myself but I couldn’t risk the life of my unborn baby.

“If I’m out with my husband I get dirty looks and hissed insults at most; people only become audibly abusive or openly confrontational when I’m out without my husband – unfortunately the presence of my little girl doesn’t seem to silence them in the same way.”

The post With the Niqab Being a Political Football, Let’s Listen to the Voice of One Who Wears It appeared first on TELL MAMA.

This report looks at the impact of on-line and off-line experiences of anti-Muslim hostility on British Muslims in the UK. It highlights how some male Muslims are failing to report in Institutional anti-Muslim prejudice for fear of being targeted and for fear that they will be seen to be ‘weak’ in the eyes of their families and lead to instability in their employment. It also highlights how key ‘trigger’ events such as the murder of Lee Rigby, the actions of the so-called Islamic State and the Rotherham grooming scandal, have led to multiple impacts within Muslim communities. It also re-affirms the link between racist language and anti-Muslim prejudice, with one female respondent saying, “actually, 9 out of 10 times, the abuse I receive is based on race. Although they use religion because I am identifiable as a Muslim woman, the words that come out of their mouth have to do with race, so the race and the religion are tied up together in people’s minds.”

Participants in the report talk about the disturbing nature of verbal and physical violence that they have suffered. A convert to Islam, Sophie (who wears the Hijab) stated, “a guy walked past, he spat at me and called me a ‘Muzzi’. Also, I’ve been called dirty Paki, (I am white), as a group of guys walked past and shouted ‘speak English in our country.’ I was looking at a map and did not say anything.”

Some participants also warned about the risks of radicalisation, especially for young people as a result of suffering online and/or offline anti-Muslim hate crimes. One respondent, Hamza, noted that “anti-Muslim hate crime has affected Muslims. This is why Muslims are going to Syria. This is why they support ISIS. When people experience Islamophobic abuse, they will be easily radicalised. They feel weak, lonely, isolated, and rejected from British society. This is when these hate preachers pick them up and brainwash them. If you are constantly victimised, you are weak.”

This report also highlights an impact on Muslim communities which is rarely discussed and which includes changes in dress style so that attention is not drawn to the visibility of their faith. The report highlights the issue of Muslims managing their Muslim identity on-line and off-line with the aim of reducing future abuse. It states that, “the reality of anti-Muslim hate crime creates ‘invisible’ boundaries, across which members of the Muslim community are not ‘welcome’ to step. The enactment of both virtual and physical boundaries impacts upon ‘emotional geographies’ in relation to the way in which Muslims perceive the spaces and places around and outside their communities of abode. Rather than risk the threat of being attacked, either off-line or on-line, many actual and potential victims opt to change their lifestyles and retreat to ‘their own’ communities.

]]> 1227 https://www.faith-matters.org/role-of-righteous-muslims-in-the-holocaust/ Thu, 05 Jan 2012 23:32:46 +0000 https://faith-matters.org/index.php/2012/01/05/role-of-righteous-muslims-in-the-holocaust/ Faith Matters developed the Role of Righteous Muslims Booklet in order to document the stories of Muslims, driven by their faith and the code of honour (BESA), to protect the lives of persecuted Jews in the Holocaust. The code of honour or BESA was fundamental to Albania and many Albanian Muslims protected fellow Jewish Albanians from persecution because of this code and because of the heightened value of life which was fundamental to Quranic teachings. From Morocco through to Paris and Turkey, many Muslims stood up and protected the lives of the persecuted through the Holocaust.Many of them were persecuted Jews.

The story of Muslims in the Holocaust is deliberately and micheviously being re-written post 9/11 as though Muslims supported the efforts of the Nazis. The vast and overwhelming majority of Muslims supported the war efforts against the Nazis and fought for the liberation of France, for England and King and Country and in the battlefields of Burma, South East Asia and Italy. There were those in the minority who misguidedly supported the Nazis who won their support by manipulating local tensions and issues. The Bosnian brigades are an example of this and these elements cannot be written out, nor should they be. Localised tensions and ethnic divides were used to manipulate groups to join the Nazi effort and 60 years later, many Bosnian Muslims were they themselves persecuted and killed in a genocide by Serbs who created death camps and who used rape as a weapon of war against many Bosnian women.

We also take this opportunity to honour those, regarded as ‘Righteous’ by Yad Vashem, who were Muslim and who have been honoured for risking their lives and the lives of their families in protecting the lives of persecuted Jews. These are their names. May their names and the names of others live on in history and be a source of pride for Muslims and people who believe in the value of life.

Cohesion has therefore been a driving force strategically within the Organisation and at an operational level. Our work through the following publications show that this theme has been pervasive and it will continue to be driven through what is now regarded socially as integration work.

Cohesion Programmes
1) Our Faiths and Our Shared Futures Programme,

2) Resisting Through Resilience Programme

Cohesion / integration work will continue to be essential to maintaining positive and good community relations and will become even more important as economic issues affect many communities within our country. This is why we will continue to focus on this area and work towards mutual understanding and dialogue within regions and cities in the United Kingdom.

This is a report that outlines the views of Muslim chaplains, sector leaders and Muslim communities as well as other faith communities on faith leadership. This work was undertaken over a 7 month period and took in a number of key organisations that work with Muslim and other faith communities. This is a unique report that looks at the provision of chaplaincy and pastoral care services within the following sectors: The NHS, Higher and Further Education sectors and the Prison Service.

The report also outlines the growing chaplaincy and pastoral skills base that is growing within Muslim communities and this is a mechanism through which all faiths can support people when they are going through traumatic or turbulent periods in their lives.

The English Defence League: Challenging Our Country and Our Values of Social Inclusion, Fairness and Equality. A detailed report on key leaders within the English Defence League, their funders and those that formulate its strategy. This report is a damning insight into a group that promotes a non-racist image, yet those aligned and linked to it hold views that are openly discriminatory against all Muslims and some speak the same language of the British National Party – the language of exclusionism, of non-equal human rights and of the need to ‘send people back.’ These values go contrary to what our country stands for and what we as a nation are about. We are about Fairness, Freedom, Hard Work, Equality and Social Inclusion. We are a modern Britain and a modern nation born from hard work and fairness!

Please Note:
We would like to clarify that Mark Israel, described in paragraph 4.9. of our report on the English Defence League as “a former volunteer with the Board of Deputies’ Community Security Trust (CST)”, has not been a CST volunteer for many years; and that CST (a separate organisation from the Board of Deputies) has repeatedly condemned the EDL, for example in the following posts on the CST Blog:

• https://thecst.org.uk/blog/?p=555
• https://thecst.org.uk/blog/?p=686
• https://thecst.org.uk/blog/?p=963
• https://thecst.org.uk/blog/?p=1602
• https://thecst.org.uk/blog/?p=1956

The Our Faiths and Our Shared Futures booklet is the culmination of 1 years work with imams, priests and rabbis in Derby. The booklet looks at scriptural narratives that underscore the need for (1) the respect of difference (2) the protection of life (3) countering extremism.

The booklet is made up of the work of many within the City and is a local narrative against division and extremism and against those who want to separate communities. Faith Matters worked with local religious leaders in looking at relevant religious texts in relation to the themes above and also facilitated interfaith meetings. The text was then edited by local young people in Derby and Faith Matters faciliated and supported local Derby young people in putting together the booklet. This is a booklet developed by local residents in Derby to tackle issues of extremism. Truly Big Society in Action!

]]> 148 https://www.faith-matters.org/our-shared-faiths-our-shared-futures/ Tue, 17 Aug 2010 13:24:22 +0000 https://faith-matters.org/index.php/2010/08/17/our-shared-faiths-our-shared-futures/ What is ‘Our Faiths and Our Shared Futures’ Booklet about?

The purpose of this booklet was to show the connections between the different communities of Barnet, Enfield and Haringey. The Our Faiths and Our Shared Futures programme celebrated the fact that faith is a positive thing that could bring the young people of Barnet, Enfield and Haringey together. (This project was also undertaken in Derby and links to the two booklets for Enfield, Haringey & Barnet and Derby are listed below).

In this booklet you can read the words within our religious texts which speak against the message of hate. Islam, Judaism and Christianity are based on social justice and tell us that the messages of extremism are wrong.

We therefore analysed the words from the Qur’an, the Torah and the Bible which tell a different story to the story that extremists tell. These words talk about acceptance, tolerance and mutual understanding.

The words from these religious texts which we analysed were selected by a ‘Faith Narratives Committee’ made up of people from Barnet, Enfield and Haringey and Derby who represent the Muslim, Christian and Jewish communities. These knowledgeable people met to discuss the things that the three faiths have in common. The booklets therefore looked at:

• The importance of valuing life as described within the Quran, Torah and Bible
• How these texts instruct us to avoid violence – both towards people of our own faith and to people of other faiths, or those without a faith at all
• Respecting your community and the differences in what people believe, their way of life and their opinions
• Understanding the values of human rights that are at the heart of the Qur’an, Torah and Bible around human rights and respecting the values of the community in which you live.

The booklets can be downloaded here:

Enfield, Haringey and Barnet Our Faiths and Our Shared Futures Booklet, (press the link),

<Derby Our Faiths and Our Shared Futures Booklet, (press the link),

If you do use these resources, we would be grateful if you could inform us of this and your experiences in using these booklets. Do e-mail us on info@faith-matters.co.uk

THE ROLE OF RIGHTEOUS MUSLIMS: HEROES SAVING LIVES IN THE HOLOCAUST

This booklet, (the Role of Righteous Muslims), is aimed at broadening knowledge and awareness of the roles that some Muslims took during the Holocaust and whose stories show the moral and physical courage of these individuals who believed in doing what was right.

Today, unfortunately, xenophobia and fear ‘of the other’ still continue to plague societies and the United Kingdom is not immune to these issues. The caricaturing of communities continues in some quarters and the lessons of history are not learnt.  Yet,  history  should  teach  us  and  guide  us  so  that  we  preserve  the  stories  of our  common  humanity and social links which should not be forgotten. Furthermore, these  stories  should  not  be  physically  or  mentally  shelved  as  though  they  have  no significance in the modern world. If anything, they have a greater significance today then they would have had 10, 20 or 30 years ago.

The Righteous Muslims booklet shows us that there are many stories of positive Muslim and Jewish interaction, even at the darkest moments in history. It shows a common bond and a link between people of two faiths who believe in the compassion of God and in the sanctity of life. Whilst the politics of the Middle East may block such stories out of the public narrative, there is a duty on us all to ensure that they get their rightful place in our social and educational narratives.

Other possible reading materials on the subject of the Righteous can be found at:
https://www.agnesgrunwaldspier.com/
https://www.mohammedamin.com/Reviews/The-other-Schindlers.html

]]> 122 https://www.faith-matters.org/developing-diversity-directory/ Mon, 07 Jun 2010 11:57:49 +0000 https://faith-matters.org/index.php/2010/06/07/developing-diversity-directory/

• Download this report