A recent story published by MailOnline and The Sun reposted an argument between TfL passengers from December 14, 2014.

The respective headlines gave weight to the ‘You white sl*g!’ and ‘Don’t call me a white b***h!’ comments. We are then informed that ‘Two white women and two women wearing hijabs fired insults at each other while a horrified onlooker filmed the whole thing’. And ‘Shocking moment ‘racist’ Muslim women face off with white women in vicious confrontation on a London train’.

Both journalists make efforts to transcribe the argument, its insults and abuses. Yet the MailOnline copy makes little effort to highlight the abusive comments directed at the Muslim women. It acknowledges that they experience a ‘torrent of racist and Islamophobic abuse’; but does little to provide readers with statements until the end of the article.

Missing from the MailOnline copy are these statements:

“I don’t care if that’s your family or not or one of yous (sic), I don’t give a s**t she’s sitting there with her headscarf on being racist.”

“She’s sitting there with a headscarf on like I’m going to be threatened.”

“You’re a Muslim p***k, with that s**t round your head.”

To the Sun’s credit, the journalist did acknowledge that the argument was not quite so one-sided. But the accusation of racism remains directed solely at the Muslim women, abusive statements directed at the Muslim women are not afforded the same scrutiny, even when the MailOnline article acknowledges that the Muslim women experienced racist and Islamophobic abuse.

The MailOnline copy did acknowledge that the video surfaced in December 2014; but you’d need to read further down the article to learn this fact. The Sun, however, made the odd claim that  ‘an eyewitness filmed the altercation in March but the footage has only just surfaced online’. This may owe to the fact the article appeared a day after the MailOnline version appeared online.

In a heated and unpleasant argument where neither side comes across well, the context of what triggered the argument eludes both articles. That context does appear in the original video description.

YouTube user Jo Hip wrote that the argument had started ten minutes before they hit record. According to Jo Hip, “it all started when the white girl noticed the somalian girls steering at her and making comments under their breaths, after a while the white girl asked them, ‘Why do you keep on looking at me?. The Somalian girls responded by saying, ‘We’re free to look at whoever we want’”.

The description then adds:”After a while the white girl said ‘ I’ve dealt with many people like you and I won’t be intimidated’. When the Somalian girls heard the White girl say ‘People like you’, they assumed she was talking about their religion or race, they then said’ What do you mean people like us? Somalian? Muslim?? Well you’re nothing but a ‘White Slag’.”

Only after hearing the utterance of ‘white slag’ did the video record. The justification for filming was “to show the ignorance of people. Ignorance knows no colour or religion.”

This distorted framing of the article perhaps influenced some the comments from MailOnline readers. It reflected their own anxieties towards multiculturalism. Others recycled myths that the police would favour the Muslim women. It also captured their pessimism and fatalism. Soon it became clear that the comments focused less on the content and more on their own broader concerns and biases.

A bigger question, however, remains: why was a video uploaded in December 2014 reposted in 2016?

The post How a MailOnline article distorted a video from 2014 to highlight ‘racist’ Muslim women appeared first on TELL MAMA.

For Mucahit Bilici, comedy offers the means to invert the distorting power of stereotypes. This is true for anyone who has experienced racism and Islamophobia.

This inversion reflects a recent Twitter trend that ridiculed the Sun’s claim that one in five Muslims has ‘sympathy for jihadis’. The hashtag #1in5Muslims also created a wider discussion about Islamophobia.

The polling company behind the Sun poll, Survation, faced criticisms for its methodological approach. It told the Guardian that it picked “1,500 Muslim surnames” from its database. Telephone interviews did not proceed until the individuals identified confirmed an Islamic belief.

Monday’s edition of the Sun had claimed that this sympathy extended to ISIS. But the poll did specify any group. It rather sought, in a simplistic and vague manner, to gauge ‘sympathy’ with Muslims who had joined fighters in Syria. Fighters could extend to other groups including anti-Assad forces and Kurdish groups.

The Sun’s political editor Tom Newton-Dunn wrote “if the poll reflected views across the country it would mean 500,000 have some support for jihadis“. To extend that logic, a Survation poll in March for Sky News asked the same question to non-Muslims. It found that 14 per cent had expressed ‘sympathy’. If that poll reflected national opinion it would mean that 8.47m ‘have some support for jihadis’.

Survation have distanced themselves from the Sun’s interpretation of their data.

As Maria Sobolewska notes, the language of polling is important. There’s a fundamental difference between emotional sympathy and ideological endorsement. That way, the bar becomes so low it renders it an almost pointless measure of opinion. What that sympathy means remains open to interpretation. This interpretative framework allowed the Sun’s Kelvin MacKenzie to write “Sympathy for firing a machine gun at point-blank range at unarmed innocent young people on a night out enjoying a band or a bite to eat?“

MacKenzie then attempted to justify the rejection of refugees fleeing the competing totalitarian terrors of ISIS and Assad.  He used the poll data to justify rejecting any person from Turkey. That bizarre logic almost enters the realm of the paranoia around the conspiracy of Islamisation.

This framework also applies to the ComRes poll after the first Paris atrocities at the start of 2015. It found that 27 per cent of British Muslims ‘have some sympathy for the motives behind the attacks on Charlie Hebdo in Paris’.  And the same problem emerged. Nigel Farage cited this information in a wider attack on British Muslim communities. The Ukip leader again reinforced the idea of a ‘fifth column’. This vague wording allows for a variety of interpretations. Even when 68 per cent of Muslims in the same poll rejected violence in the name of blasphemy. Even when 78 per cent found the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed deeply offensive.  Of the 1,000 British Muslims polled 94 per cent would report another Muslim to the police if they planned acts of violence.

Without a comparative poll the vague framework allows individuals to believe the best and worst of British Muslims. Some do justify violence. A great majority do not. Opinion polls have value when done right. And the above  have shown some obvious flaws. For the Sun newspaper, however, this front page has registered record complaints to press regulator Ipso.

The post Why more than #1in5Muslims ridiculed the Sun’s ‘jihadi sympathy’ story appeared first on Religious Reader.