Islamophobia has always existed, but never to this level before. Naivety isn’t an option. Islamophobia is real, it exists, it is growing in strength and it is spreading. The main culprit and causative factors are the media and the government. Various academic studies have shown us that the media is the 4th estate. Government ministers legitimise their own imperialistic and ideological agendas by using the media to spew out propaganda they desperately require. The media has the ability to condition human minds and in the case of Islamophobia, it can unfortunately shape a society to end up hating Muslims and Islam. And let’s look at what’s known commonly now as the 21:1 problem. Cardiff University and Lancaster University have carried out a lot of analysis in this. What Cardiff University concluded after analysing print media over a good few years is that for everyone one occasion where you see a positive reference to Islam or Muslims in the media, whether that happens to be doctor, citizen, law maker or any positive noun or adjective you can use, for every 21 occasions thereafter you will hear something negative i.e. suicide bomber, terrorist, fanatic, radical, extremist, militant, evil. Even the term convert can’t be used neutrally now with the Muslim community. It doesnt matter how good natured a non-Muslim is out there, if you are constantly being hit with this deluge of anti-Muslim sentiment, sooner or later you are going to give in and your perceptions are going to change. So what does this mean for Muslims living in the UK? Do we let it get worse before we do something about it or do we start supporting those already working in this area? We need to challenge Islamophobia in all of it spheres; at it’s root which is in the media and the government and where it’s affect takes place which is in the society. In order to do this, we need to work on several essential components simultaneously. The way to deal with it is multifaceted. There are organisations who push to exclusively challenge Islamophobia by encouraging Muslims to demonstrate the practical examples of Islam in every day society through positive individual interaction and Muslim led social and welfare projects, along with educational initiatives which demystify Islam and Muslims (This is something we should have always been doing but due to being a largely migrant Muslim population coming from former colonised lands, our overall inferiority complexes and our earlier priorities were different to what they are now). We do need this to counteract the media and government narrative, but we must to be realistic. Muslims are less than 5% of the population in the UK. Furthermore, we’re not evenly spread but densely populated in pockets throughout the UK. This means our interaction with non Muslims isn’t going to be as far reaching as we’d like. This can only mean that for many, the sole information source regarding Muslims and Islam is going to be the media.This is why we desperately need organisations which challenge the media narrative. This could be by providing an alternative narrative and challenging the incorrect negative stories in the mainstream media head on by working with the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO). Furthermore, linked to this point, we should support individuals and organisations who are invited to appear on the mainstream media who represent the concerns of the Muslim communities and articulate this well. We need to support organisations who lobby and submit detailed researched counter narratives and responses to pressure proposed laws which fuel Islamophobia by treating Muslims as a suspect community by criminalising mainstream Islamic beliefs and legitmate political grievances. All of these components in challenging Islamophobia are inter reliant on each other, so neglecting one in favour of another would severely limit the results across the board in achieving the overall goal which is to change the narrative on Muslims in the UK as well having greater protection of Muslims in the Media and Politics by effectively challenging laws which target Muslims as well as stronger regulation and legislative protection overall.
Posted on: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 11:27:43 +0000
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