Faith Matters has watched the difficult and abrasive debates that have taken place around the development of a definition on anti-Muslim hatred or prejudice by this Government.

We are of the firm opinion that a definition is essential if we are to ensure that some fundamentals of our society are to be protected. Firstly, there needs to be a common definition that lets the public know what anti-Muslim hatred is and what it ‘looks like’ and ‘sounds like’. This definition also needs to be framed so that it fits into existing legislation and does not become an exercise in producing a piece of text that has no legal relevance.

Secondly, the debate rumbles on about ensuring that any definition does not stop critique of religion or faith. This also covers Islam. People have the right to critique or even dislike any faith. What they don’t have the right to do, is to attack, harm of hurt people who happen to be Muslim.

This is essential to lay out though there is a common agreement amongst many, that the definition must protect individuals and their rights to live freely without fear, harm or intimidation, as British Muslims. This does not mean that criticism of Islam is anti-Muslim, though we also acknowledge that each issue must be taken on a case by case basis and if criticism of Islam turns into targeted hatred towards Muslims, then such behaviour is not protected under the rights of free speech. At this stage, it should not be tolerated.

For far too long, there has been inaction on this and we urge the Government to take urgent action to move this process along. We must also commend the Government on the actions that they have taken in the last few days on the launch of a security fund for mosques and Islamic institutions, given the targeting of mosques by anti-Muslim activists and bigots. Furthermore, we acknowledge the work that Government has done to support the monitoring of anti-Muslim prejudice and support for victims of it, through Tell MAMA.

Yesterday, an interesting and fruitful discussion on the battle against extremism took place in Twitter HQ, held by Faith Matters. The debate included speeches from Sara Khan and others and focused on the twofold fight against Islamist and far-right extremism.

The discussion offered a range of fascinating insights into the depth of the problem confronting society, and the possible ways around it. Some did involve the social media tech giants becoming more involved against online extremism fermenting itself increasingly. Others warned about the deep reach of Islamists wielded through various charities. We had important interventions, and two that seemed most noteworthy.

The first came from the pro-refugee activist and liberal Muslim Oz Katerji who offered important rebuttals on the terminology of Islamophobia offering protection from the criticism of the religion. Too often the debate becomes mired in this deflective discourse and ultimately the losers from it are only British Muslims themselves. Anti-Muslim prejudice is a scourge in our society, and one of the fueling stones for the far-right. It is enabled by largely the Conservative Party, who dating back to Winston Churchill and beyond have always regarded Islam, and often by extension Muslims, in a deeply cynical manner. Katerji was also correct in disputing the moral conflation of the far-left and far-right. An important distinction must be made between those belonging to the deeply socialist strand of the anti-fascist left and those from a background of apologia for Stalinism and other corrosive totalitarian movements that exist today and stand in opposition to western interests.

We need to be more consistent in challenging white supremacist extremism in this country. Although Islamist terrorism has plagued Britain in recent years, the everyday hate crime attacks on British Muslims by, often, young white perpetrators cannot be ignored. British Muslims have faced increased levels of racism, and although there have been commendable efforts by local police forces and political parties to address this, part of that is listening to British Muslims and recognising the great threat of far-right extremism. Given the rise in referrals to Prevent for far-right views, we should be gravely concerned by the nature of our discourse. Some might say that the fishing net has been cast further and wider, no longer simply targeting British Muslims, but there is a growing sense that an increasing number of Britons regarding their fellow British Muslim citizens with a degree of suspicion and doubt.

Which brings to the rather fantastic speech by Sunny Hundal who spoke about empathy. This is after all the basic fundamental virtue of a society governed by representative democracy, and one that is essentially a broad coalition of diverse groups and interests. Bridging the gap between a socially conservative white voter and an immigrant Muslim is not easy. But it is only achieved through empathetic politics, on seeking grounds where possible mutualism can exist and flourish, on creating a sense of community and attachment to people and place. Extremists are atomised, at least in the sense that their fidelity owes itself to a narrow exclusionary group through which they understand their grievances with the world and express their status in it and relations to others. Muslim extremists and far-right supremacists preach about a fundamental divide between Muslims and non-Muslims, stirring panic about how Muslims few democracy and human rights. But it bases itself on stoking social exclusion, on feeding off the sense of marginalisation and isolation that exists. No-go zones are a myth in this country, but that doesn’t mean groups don’t seek security and solidarity with those they have greater cultural affiliation with. This is fine to an extent, except where it creates disconnect with other groups. And then we stop understanding and empathising with each other’s concerns. Sunny Hundal superbly articulated the need for understanding other people’s concerns, because there is nothing better for extremists than unattended grievances.

We have a long way to go but this would be a good step towards having a pluralistic and harmonious society.

– Written by Rabbil Sikdar

Channel 4 commissioned ICM to poll Muslims in Britain on a range of issues from women’s rights to marriage equality.

But did the poll titled “What do British Muslims really think?” answer its own question? Polling British Muslims is a difficult and expensive task. It’s why YouGov avoided the Sun’s now infamous ‘1 in 5 Muslims’ poll.

ICM’s researchers picked 138 random Local Super Output Areas where Muslims make up at least 20 per cent of the population. This skewed the findings to areas with relative social deprivation. It also over-represented certain ethnic groups. Yet it still captured 51 per cent of the total Muslim population.

Of the 1,081 Muslims polled, 55 per cent were Pakistani. British Asians/Asians totaled 83 per cent of the polling data. Data from the last census revealed that British Asian/Asians totaled 67.6 per cent of Muslims in England and Wales.

The poll included just 11 Arabs and 16 white Muslims who account for 6.6 per cent and 7.8 per cent of Muslims in England and Wales.

Despite methodological issues it remains a serious poll.

As with previous surveys – Muslims identify with Britain at a higher rate than the national average. They also expressed greater attachment to their local areas. A vast majority believe that Britain was a good place for Muslims to live in, and 78 per cent said they would like to integrate into British life on certain topics.

Nearly a quarter supported the idea of sharia law operating in parts of Britain above British law. Yet what defines sharia law remains ambigious and open to interpretation. But as Dr Imam Mamadou Bocoum notes: ‘Shariah means a road that leads into Spring Water, which is nothing but to live in peace and harmony. Amongst the principles of the Shariah is to preserve and protect life, intellect, property, honour, lineage, and religion‘.

There was little support among the Muslims polled to establish a caliphate. Support for ISIS polled at just 3 per cent. Few blamed the police or government for girls travelling to Syria.

More than a third of Muslims polled would report individuals who they suspected of seeking to participate in terrorism abroad to police. A figure that stands above the control sample of 30 per cent. Nearly half would attempt to dissuade the individual.

On the subject of extremism, 47 per cent agreed that Muslims need to do more to tackle extremism. The data reveals that a vast majority of Muslims look to the government to tackle Islamophobia and fund special projects to help communities root out the causes of violent extremism.

Islamophobia is a concern in this context, even when 73 per cent thought that religious harassment was not a problem in their local area. Individuals may of course experience less discrimination within their own ethnic and faith communities. Or in a public setting disclose their experiences to strangers. Research also points to the fact that hate crimes increase in areas of deprivation.

The wider public had also expressed a wider concern for Islamophobia than the Muslims polled. Nor do we know what language the interviews were conducted in. So it’s possible that individuals may not understand a question that pertains to religious prejudice.

There was also an overwhelming desire to empower young Muslims and women in the decisions that affect them. And many felt that better leadership in Muslim communities would help address the causes of violent extremism. Just one in 10 sought information on current affairs from mullahs at mosques. And a fifth never attend their local mosques. But 72 per cent felt that their local mosque did represent their views.

The most popular choice for television news was BBC 1, and a vast majority got their news from social media accounts. Yet again, the BBC remained the most popular source for news online.

Discussions of attitudes towards homosexuality dictated a majority of media coverage. The poll found that 52 per cent dsaid they disagreed with homosexuality being legal in Britain, compared with 5 per cent among the public at large who disagreed.

For British-born Muslims, 27 per cent agreed that homosexuality should be legal. Almost a third said neither/nor and 38 per cent disagreed. But that figure requires a caveat since the total figure in the weighted and unweighted sample is below 500 people. Muslims born outside of Britain were more likely to disagree that homosexuality should be legal (a net disagreement of 68 per cent in a sample of 601 or 609 when factored against weighted and unweighted bases).

On the topic of gay marriage and allowing a homosexual person to teach, the data reveals slight differences between Muslims born in the UK and abroad. But the above caveat still applies.

Despite a proclivity towards antisemitic tropes, British Muslims were not hostile towards Jewish communities. ICM asked the control and Muslim samples to measure their feelings towards faith and non-faith groups on a thermometer. Oddly, views towards Sikhs were missing from the data. The control group survey were more likely to agree that antisemitism was a problem. Yet 44 per cent of the Muslim survey and 46 per cent of the control group did not consider antisemitism a problem in Britain today.

The control survey were far more likely to disagree (51 per cent) with the statement ‘Jews still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust’. Yet 18 per cent did agree with the statement, compared to 34 per cent in the Muslim survey.

Confusion about deaths in the Holocaust in the Muslim survey may owe to ignorance, not antisemitism. As 55 per cent did not know the true figure. Just 14 people agreed that it was a myth perpetuated by Jewish people. The control group was not asked this question so it’s hard to make a direct comparison.

Muslims surveyed overwhelmingly had also rejected the right of individuals to publish pictures of the prophet Muhammad. But 12 per cent stated that it would depend on the nature of the pictures. Responses in the control group were more in favour of publishing cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. A fifth of non-Muslims who rejected this position were Christian.

Opinions in the control group sample were even more divided when it came to the question of publishing cartoons that mock the prophet Muhammad. And 44 per cent said publications should not have this right  – and that included 32 per cent of non-religious people and 50 per cent of Christians. A measure of support from Christians may owe to a sense of Abrahamic solidarity or the UK’s own historic and abolished blasphemy laws.

Linda Woodhead, Professor of Sociology of Religion at Lancaster University, surveyed different faith groups in 2013. It found a variety of liberal and conservative views towards topics like abortion and homosexuality.

ICM also asked how often Muslims had mixed socially with non-Muslims in the past year. Again, what defines this social interaction remains open to interpretation. It was rare for Muslims to have had no social mixing outside of the home. Nor are social interactions defined by the boundaries of a person’s home. That applies to Muslim and non-Muslim alike. Yet the data does show that at least a fifth did host and visit non-Muslims friends at least once a week, and 17 per cent welcomed non-Muslims into their homes on a daily basis.

Trevor Phillips, the former head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, who will present the Channel 4 documentary What British Muslims Really Think tomorrow evening, made a problematic statement on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

Phillips stated that: “What we also found is that there is a correspondence between this desire to live separately and sympathy for terrorism. People who want to live separately are about twice as likely to say that they have sympathy for terrorist acts.” Yet the data reveals that just 40 people expressed sympathy for terrorist acts. Nor was there any effort to extrapolate the meaning from a vague term, as sympathy does not always mean endorsement. Phillips is overstating the opinions of a tiny proportion in the data set.

That rhetoric can also suggest that religiosity and support for terrorism are somehow linked, a point that misunderstands the nature of radicalisation.

ICM asked some wide-ranging, probing and sensationalistic questions; but to suggest it captures the breadth of Muslim opinion is not quite accurate. Yes, some issues to address but the real conversations must happen beyond this poll.

This post originally appeared on Religious Reader.

The post Why the latest poll won’t tell us what all British Muslims actually think 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.

During a short trip to the West Bank this November, an interfaith group, most of them British Muslims from the Faith Matters organization, visited Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Ramallah and Hebron through a Holy Land Trust program for five days.

Faith Matters is a UK interfaith and community cohesion-based organization that works “towards conflict resolution and cohesion through work with faith communities in the UK and the Middle East.” The aim of the trip was to bring British Muslims to the Palestinian territories so that they gain awareness of issues within the region and to build networks and links with faith-based and interfaith organizations in the arena. Therefore, the trip included meetings with key faith leaders, organizations and faith institutions.

The group had the chance to have an overview of interreligious relations in the region and diverse Jewish perspectives on Judaism and the State. They also met with Archbishop Atallah Hanna who talked about the relationship between Muslims and Christians. The group also had the time to wander around the old city of Jerusalem and visit the Dome of the Rock and the Aqsa Mosque. They also learned about the relationships between Arabs and Jews through Musalaha, an organization that works towards reconciliation.

The group had a series of private-facing discussions in Jerusalem and Bethlehem including a meeting with HLT Executive Director Sami Awad (who shared his personal experience in nonviolence), a meeting with a member of parliament and representatives from the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT). Short pilgrimages were also included and allowed the group to pray at the Ibrahimi Mosque. A visit to HLT home rebuilding project at Al-Khader village and to the St. George Monastery was a highlight. A great ending of their tour was enjoying dinner and a cultural evening along with HLT staff in Bethlehem before heading back home.

With the aim of promoting the messages of understanding, mutual support and empathy between Muslims and Christians both in Jerusalem and the Palestinian territories and within the UK, the group left the Holy Land supporting Muslim and Christian dialogue and ensuring that the dialogue continues through the participants when back in the UK.

Source: The Holy Land Trust Link: https://www.holylandtrust.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=687&Itemid=90

Alliances between Muslims and Jews and a different discourse in the future by Fiyaz Mughal OBE FCMI

My friends. It’s wonderful to be here today and I am honoured to be invited. I bring a message of hope today, but first of all I want to impress upon you how important it is to keep hoping.  So before I tell you how I have been seeking to promote a healthier discourse between Jews and Muslims, let me remind you what is at stake.

We’re all familiar with the historic faultlines in the relationship between Jews and Muslims, and it may take an effort for us to tear ourselves away from those quarrels and look at what’s happening around us – but we must do it. The fact is this: the Far Right is slowly gaining electoral ground in Britain, as it is across Europe. Intolerance and bigotry is creeping in under other names, like patriotism and a narrow concern with one’s own people to the exclusion of all else. The irony is that both Jews and Muslims are in a unique position to know how damaging such attitudes can be – we see the consequences played out in Israel and Palestine every day. Now in Britain we are facing a similar set of attitudes, except this time we’re all targets.

British Muslims, British Jews and tolerant British liberals of any faith and none must have a clear answer to this Far Right threat. We must be able to show up bigotry and intolerance for what they are – and we can’t do that if we are prey to them ourselves. We must be able to offer our young people a course of action they can take if they are concerned about bigotry and intolerance directed against them. Otherwise they may take courses of action offered to them by extremists. In short, our answer to prejudice and bigotry can only be clear if we are ourselves engaged in a peaceable, co-operative and productive discourse, one which works to secure not only peace and productivity between Jews and Muslims, but in our society as a whole.

So what are the obstacles to our progress? I believe they could be summed up in one word – fear. The politics of fear shapes the discourse between Jews and Muslims in the Middle East and over the last few years it has also threatened to shape our discourse here in Britain. We have seen the growth of negative stereotyping and a the birth of a climate of suspicion.  If the measure of a civilised society is how it treats its minorities, we in Britain are at risk of going backwards. I don’t believe we should agonise and blame ourselves for this – the politics of fear is partly about the responses of individuals but it’s also about expediency for governments. The politics of fear is useful to politicians – it is not the domain of one side or one community. All sides in the Middle East and our own government in the UK has at some time, in some way, thrived on the politics of fear. Politicians and their PR men look to fear to gain the party advantage, and the press look for the negative angle to sell more papers. And so the truth – the hopeful truth – suffers.

That truth is that things can change.  The best decisions are made free from fear. We must emancipate ourselves from fear in order to make good decisions.  I believe there’s a paradox at the heart of the conflict between Jews and Muslims and that is that everything is couched as if the problems are fixed, eternal, as if people can never change their minds. And yet we know things do change. All of us know that Middle Eastern politics are not static – they are constantly changing and fast moving. Once you accept what you know in your heart, that people and even states can change, then you must accept that things can change for the better.

So how can we pursue hopeful change?  I’m not going to talk to you about politicians today.  I want to talk about what you and I and people like us can do and contribute to.  The most obvious way is simple dialogue itself. For the last three years I have been the director of Interfaith, a not-for-profit initiative which seeks to build understanding between Jews and Muslims at home and abroad.  In this role I have run programmes, workshops and visits designed to foster debate, promote community volunteering, reduce extremism and bring people back from the brink of violence, back into society.  I have seen people change with my own eyes, even people whose views seemed trenchant and fixed.

A lot of what I do (ladies and gentlemen) is informed by events like Limmud’s annual winter conference.  We Muslims, I have to say, have some way to go in replicating the success of Limmud’s activities.  But we also have something to learn from the experiences of you as a community, a community which is integrated and which has become part of the fabric of this country, yet which still has strong cultural and religious values. Values that transcend time and which give a uniqueness to the community. Yet this model of community development and engagement has come at a cost and it has come at the cost of the persecution and pogroms committed against Jews here within the UK and throughout Russia, the Baltic States and who can forget, Europe itself. We all have to recognize that within and beyond faith communities.

But creating a new discourse between Jews and Muslims is about more than cultural events and ideological discussion, as valuable as those things are.  It is also about the nuts and bolts of life in our shared communities.  Persistent warfare, economic sieges or embargoes has led to the total economic dislocation of key areas like Gaza.  This benefits no-one and all our efforts, Jew and Muslim alike, can be directed towards projects designed to address this.  Right now, civic regeneration programmes are underway in the Palestinian territories.  Some of these are truly inspiring, both in the hope they offer to the citizens who live there and in the example they set of Judaico-Muslim cooperation.  Just off the coast of the Palestinian territories, there are gas reserves which cannot be tapped by Palestinian expertise as it currently stands.  However, a project is underway to upskill Palestinian engineers to make the most of this natural resource.  This project is funded by a Jewish philanthropist.  So even in the heart of the crucible, there is hope.  Not only is it important to develop areas that have no economic future, it is also the best way to ensure that both countries, Israel and Palestine, see the future through shared mutual financial and logistical co-operation.  It might sound prosaic, but I have never been so sure as I am now, that peace will not come through the barrel of a gun, but through strengthened economies and mutual trading co-operation.  Workaday economic solutions to what we are accustomed to thinking of as intractable ideological problems.

We can support our relatives and co-religionists in the Middle East on projects like these, but we can also replicate them here.  Judaism and Islam share a tremendous sense of civic pride, social justice and responsibility and these can be tapped into.  Often our young people are crying out for opportunities for productive, fun and economically useful opportunities.  The voluntary sector, which I work in, provides these to some extent.  But I believe we could be tapping this resource more effectively.  Our religions already provide the desire to do good, we just need outlets.  Cooperation isn’t always easy.  Some of you may know about the synagogue and mosque which stand side-by-side in Fieldgate Street, Whitechapel.  Many Imams and Rabbis over the years have nurtured excellent relations between the two places of worship and have even sought to provide guided tours of both buildings to the public as part of the same experience.  The only snag with this excellent plan has been the great difficulty in finding a regular day which isn’t either a holy day or a fast day or a feast day in either religious calendar and when both mosque and synagogue can be open.  But the hope is all, this is the kind of project I would like to see in every community.

These are not just nice-sounding ideas. A culturally and economically robust community is good for everyone.  It means more prosperity, less risk of extremism, an end to entrenched disadvantage.  We British Jews and Muslims are in a unique position to provide this robustness to our communities.  We both have a past as immigrant peoples.  We both bring a new perspective and new ideas.  If we can harness our sense of religious identity for positive ends and defy the politics of fear, I believe that we will not only achieve great things in our communities in this country, but we will set an inspiring example to our friends, families and peoples in troubled and divided societies around the world.  They need our help in reminding them to keep hoping.  The new discourse must be economic and prosaic as much as cultural and ideological – because if we give ourselves common goals, we give ourselves the hope of overcoming our differences.