Open Discussions/ Gulf Cultural Club
British Muslims: Islamophobia, aspirations and contribution
Changing the narrative from hate to hope
* Zara Mohammed
Secretary General at Muslim Council of Britain
**Miqdaad Versi
(Media monitor and researcher)
Tuesday 19th November 2024
The Muslim presence in the UK and the West is now well-established. With this come rights and duties. Good citizenship is what modern societies aspire to achieve. Muslims have contributed positively to their new abodes in the West. Some individuals have reached high offices, while most have endeavoured to enhance their societies, establish good citizenship records and sacrifice to ensure the peace and security of these lands. More than 1.5 million of them were killed in action in the two world wars.
Yet Muslims in the West are facing increasing challenges in the light of rising Islamophobia, far right sentiments and increasing polarisation fuelled by politicians and the media. How do we combat this? Building bridges of understanding and fostering hope for the betterment of society as a whole may help. What is the future of the Muslim presence in Europe generally and UK in particular? How can equal citizenship be achieved? And what are the prospects for the emergence of a real consensus among the inhabitants to accept this presence?
Zara Mohammed: It is truly an honour and a pleasure to address you. I have been told that every secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain has actually addressed you since the setting up of the MCB in 1997.
This talk really comes at a very important time and it is all about narratives. Where do we begin the journey and where do we end? And the interesting place where we find ourselves today as we mark the awareness of Islamophobic month is that not really very much has change when it comes to demonisation of Muslims.
But we in this room have seen a lot of change. We have diversified. Someone reflected to me that Muslims are either in the security agenda or the immigration agenda. But we have been here for generations and it seems quite obscure. The other sign is the rise in right wing sentiments we saw in the summer when much of our community was really shocked. My father said we saw in the 80s when we had to fight the National Front. At the time not only was racism accepted there wasn’t any law enforcement to stop it.
And now as we come to this point in time we have even more representation then we have had ever before: politically, business, pop culture, you name it. Yet Muslims are still the victims of religiously motivated hate crimes and 40 percent of religiously motivated hate crimes are against us. We see ourselves as the political punch bag of politicians, or media outlets.
But what is the engagement of the government with the Muslim community notably ourselves the MCB? Terms like Allah Ahkbar and jihad – this is a re run of the view of Muslims are oppressed or Hamas supporters. We are in a specific box and we can’t leave it. We can’t possibly have Scottish accents or human rights degrees.
I think the conversation narrative was particularly important when it came to the riots. How long did it take to call it Islamophobia? The mosques were being targeted. They were literally sharing it on whatsap. Yet they shovelled to say it. We got security funding to protect the mosques. Ok. But where was the national narrative of Muslims in this country of belonging, or citizenship not just we have to keep Britain safe.
That is the problem. When I came into the MCB in 2021 we were in covid. Forty thousand Muslims were in the frontline in the NHS and many were the first that passed away. For a small blip in time we were at the national effort to tackle this awful virus.
But even then they had a picture of Muslims praying outside breaking covid rules. This was misinformation as usual. We are always on the back foot. We are always trying to work out how we normalize ourselves, how do we change the frame?
And the other side of this is Gaza. I came here from a memorial event for Gaza. What is the day that we mark what is happening there. All the children and all the lives lost. And how many can we now count in the public space who are trying to speak openly about Gaza and have been shut down, stifled, lost their jobs and prospects.
We have a lot to think about in terms of context but the title of this talk is about hope. So thinking about all those different frames and I know there are still so many others. Let us look at the immigration agenda. You have lived here all your life in this country and you are still seen as an immigrant. Myself, I still don’t know what to do, the accent. But there is still that frame of mind.
So the point has really got to be around where is the hope? Where are we carrying things? So as an organization we are always looking at narratives. And that is really important. When I came in one of the things I had to deal with was the media.
Miqdaad had to do all these hard interviews. Then I had to deal with some of those interviews and crisis after crisis after crisis. I would be at my mum’s house at 10pm and here we go. Terrorists – international news. Gove trying to ban all the Muslim organization. And you think they only come to us for bad news stories. But what gave us hope was the ability to articulately convey who we are in their language and to let them know we are really done with this you deciding who we are. Women can’t lead and all that.
And I think the hope comes actually from rooms like this from ally ship and from our ability to challenge bad narratives with evidence of how Muslims are demonised. I was on a call and someone said we can’t have Islamophobia in Islam. Someone else said you do not need that definition. You are covered in hate crimes so aren’t Muslims exceptionalising themselves?
Okay so lets just take a deep breath. The scale of what we are talking about. You could have Uyghur genocide in China and Trump and the US agreeing on something. Think about it. The hypocrisy of that situation.
So I think one part of it is how do we confidently articulate our truth, challenge narratives and the proactive action that we take. If we are not operating in public and we are not engaging in the public space we will just be in the fringes. I know that is particularly difficult with what is going on in the Middle East but we have to engage. We still have to write, we still have to be part of society.
If we find ourselves in the fringes who is listening? Being in the mainstream and being able to hold your own and understand how to use policy is really important. I have visited over 300 organisations – now I can say 301 – and what gives me a lot of hope is that communities at a local level are very strong. There is not a community that I have visited that does not have a food bank. Local communities are very strong and this comes out in the national conversation.
But when I went around communities particularly when there was a surge of the far right or where there is Reform and Nigel Farraj supporters often what you find is they have often never met a Muslim. Or if they have it is this kind of squeed narrative they have taken our jobs.
Sunderland is a good example. We spoke to the management there and they said they were trying to blow up the mosque. When we came here we built businesses because no one would employ us. So we created an economy.
In Liverpool when I spoke to Imam Kelwick he gave the rioters a hug and sent them some uber eats and asked them why are you doing this? ‘And not a single had anything to say. They just had a lot of anger. He said if we don’t have conversations and dialogue how to we reach people who do not understand us. We are not all bad people but there is a lot of misinformation and a lot of people who benefit economically from the agenda of Islamophobia.
So if we want to champion a change we have to understand power – how it works and how to use it and the power of our own voice. This is very important at this moment in time and I will touch on Trump. Some Muslims voted for Trump. He has had conversations with some Muslim groups. It is a very difficult time given the situation with the Biden administration and the weaponisation of Israel.
During the election we found we did not have a political hope and even now things are still quite complicated. I am a bit sceptical on Trum. I know that war is bad for business. He may stop it. But in terms of his cabinet and what we have seen before is he really going to change? I think in some way he already emboldens a very confident far right, extremist ideology and pockets of people who are not very pro Muslim yet alone pro inclusion.
So I think there are many challenges to come. And I will stop there and hope we have a really good conversation.
Miqdaad Versi: I thought I would start with a few background statistics. Just to recognise some of the quite interesting narratives about Muslims in the UK. So firstly Muslims represent about four million people in the country, that is almost six percent of the UK population. Twenty years ago that number was significantly lower. Less than two million. Now its four million. Muslims are very much part and parcel of the society that we live in. And if you think about what that means for the future we aren’t a group that can be marginalised. We are part of society.
And if you try and understand what are these four or five million people half of them are under the age of 27. They are younger than the people in the general UK population. So you have a young Muslim population. Is that something to be excited about or scared about. That is the fundamental question here.
There are those who see the Muslim population and its growth and they react with fear. And there are others who see it as an opportunity and a recognition of the diversity that the UK has. They see it as a reason why many people have chosen this country and want to come and live here.
The UK is one of the hot spots for Muslim choice globally. When it comes to the Muslim population in the UK we are major contributors to the economy. An estimated £70 billion economic impact in the UK. We are over represented in the NHS, 46,000 people there. And if you think about where you would want to live as a Muslim in the world the UK comes quite high if not at the top.
And so you think this is a new population, a younger population which is growing. Let us look at some of the important factors like education. Muslims are now performing better than the average Brit in this country. What does this mean? It means that our education system is allowing this to happen despite the significant challenges. On a fundamental basis Muslims are becoming more and more educated.
If you think about where Muslims have come from in the UK. Many of the UK Muslims have come from working class communities in Bangladesh in Pakistan. Sixty to 70 percent of the Muslim population comes from the subcontinent. Of that a large proportion comes from working class communities. They come here and the second and third generation are now out performing in education the average Brit. This is very positive.
And Muslims are huge contributors to our society. Not just now but for the future. And that is why the potential, the positivity is that we can celebrate our participation in this society not as a marginal group but as British societal group that is not on the margins, not on the side but part and parcel of the society. And that is why the issues to do with Islamophobia – we are not asking for specific favours. It is not that we want to have something special for us that we do not want for anybody else. All we want is fairness because if you can create that equal ground our communities will thrive and when our communities thrive everybody thrives.
Some people used to think Muslims are segregated away from society. I am not sure how much you are aware. If you look at the statistics Muslims are becoming less and less segregated decade after decade. And they are not the most segregated group in society at all. Hindus are more segregated as are the Jewish community. But that does not mean there is a problem. Whenever people come together in different groups that is a positive. It means you can create that haven for your community and you can grow and strengthen the society that you live in.
That is the positive side, that is the reason why many chose this country, the reason the UK is actually one of the target destinations for Muslims across the globe. Even if you think about the financial. We are the city of London here. If you think what is the European Islamic finance centre it is London. Just imagine if can remove some of the barriers making London an even stronger financial centre. If we could remove those barriers what value would that gain for our society here? It would be huge You would have far more money flowing in here, you would have far more taxes being paid over here and a stronger community
So the Muslim communities are already strong, they are already great contributors to our society. What are those barriers? What is holding back our potential and that of those around us? And that is what Islamophobia is all about – removing those barriers. Islamophobia is a type of racism. It is where Muslims are treated differently because they are Muslims. It is a type of racism that targets their Muslimness or their perceived Muslimness. That is fundamentally what it about.
That is what the definition of Islamophobia is. They target perceived expressions of Muslimness. That perceived concept is all about rationally. If your Muslim identity is a target that is a problem. It has to be dealt with. Where is this happening and why does it matter?
If you think about Islamophobia or any type of racism it is similar. You have physical acts of hate. Forty percent of hate crimes target Muslims. Physical and verbal abuse against Muslims. This is only one part of Islamophobia.
There are also the attitudes that are there about Muslims. Depending on which poll you look at between 30 and 40 percent of the UK population would support measures to reduce the number of Muslims in this country. There are problematic figures. They are harsh figures. One of the polls showed people think the Islamic religion is a threat to the Western way of life. What is happening here?
So whatever the number an advisable chunk of the UK population have quite hostile views about Islam and Muslims. Historically if you look at media issues through time general attitudes of racism have generally fallen down. Would you marry someone of a different skin colour to yourself? Things like that. Those attitudes have gone down generally.
One of the attitudes that has not gone down much is the views about Muslims. A large minority of the UK population is hostile to Muslims. It is a minority. So you have these views which are problematic and this can manifest as hate and actual violence. Verbal abuse on the streets.
But the thing that really matters is structural racism. And that is what I am talking about here. There are structures that make it difficult for you to live your life equally and fairly as a Muslim.
What do I mean by that? Muslims are over represented in the criminal justice system. I am talking about how difficult it is to get insurance. There was a study done which found that if your name was Mohamed you were more likely to have to pay more for your insurance than someone who is called Steve. Same statistics.
There as a Guardian investigation which found that if had a Muslim sounding name you were less likely to get a flat. Employment. Muslims are under employed and more in the gig economy type roles.
These are structural issues. How do you change this. Politics and media are where this happens. And we have serious Islamophobia within our politics and within our media. The media presents Muslims as terrorists, grooming gangs. There are all these negative stereotypes about Muslims being anti Semites. If you are a man you are a wife beater. If you are a woman you are oppressed. These stereotypes are corroborated again and again and these views are formed by our media discourse.
One of the areas I think is worth is touching upon a little bit more is media. I am part of the centre for media monitoring – understanding the type of services that are pushed out there and positively interacting with editors and managing editors to try and change things for the better.
In some ways there has been success. Doing some work on this by consistently calling them out when they lie. There are less lies. When we started almost every week I would be sending out a complaint to national newspapers. You lied here change it.
Let me give you one example. In a Spanish supermarket the Sun published a headline gunman shouts Allahu Akhbar as he enters a Spanish supermarket. He was a Basque separatist who does not know any Arabic. In the Basque region they are independence fighters in Spain. Nothing to do with Islam. It was a completely made up headline. It came from a far right media outlet in Europe which was then published in the Sun. Total lies. When they changed it they said gunman fires in Spanish supermarket. They changed it from terror to horror. It was no longer a Muslim and no longer terrorism.
This is the fundamental problem that is there in some newspapers. There was one example when they talked about how the UK mint was using certain banknotes and it talks about how there was outrage that some of the bank notes were found to be haram and not halal. How could something like this – it was in the Daily Express – have made it into a national newspaper. There was a cow resin which was there and Hindu groups were upset about it. They treat Muslims as a homogenous groups even though ten percent of Muslims are white.
The point I am trying to make here is that you have elements of real problematic reporting. Some of it is quite ridiculous but some of it is really quite hostile and deliberate. And what is really interesting is that holding as magnifying glass to some of these individuals and the newspapers you do sometimes force them to think again.
One of the things I am proud of is that Trevor Kavanagh a newspaper columnist in the Sun. He used to be on the press regulator board. He wrote that he now has to step on egg shells because of the eagle eyes of Miqdaad Versi. I am looking at him and I am sure he will be held to account.
We can argue with Islamophobia society has to be altered. It does. But we as communities also have to stand up for rights. That is vital. What I am trying to get at here is that that will help a little bit. Nowadays you hardly see inaccurate stories about Muslims but you see more pernicious negativity and hateful language which you have much less ability to change. Why? Because what if someone decides to call the shahada an Islamic declaration and they call Allahu Akhbar an Islamist cry. We will fight back and we will try to make sure they use better language.
We had a round table on this a few months ago with the national editors of newspapers and broadcasters when we talked about some of these topics on jihad and Allahu Akhbar and how they use these terms problematically. We are finding improvements through positive, constructive engagement.
Structurally there is problem here. Some of the people who are in charge of some of these newspapers and media outlets want to push the narrative about Muslims and Islam being a threat to this society. They want to push the narrative that Muslims are taking over this country. They want to push this idea that they have to be stopped before they are a problem.
And The Times and The Telegraphy in particular as well as the Sun and the Daily Mail are being perpetrators of this.
It is most powerfully exhibited in the way the media talks about the issue of Islam and Palestine today. There is a literal genocide taking place where people are being killed on the streets, clearly deliberately. And when people come to the rescue the drones kill them again. This is evil this is unacceptable and you see it on our screens. Social media means that we don’t have the monopoly of only voice coming through. This is one of the biggest positives of social media. You see a greater range of views. We can see this with our own eyes and our national media outlets do not represent that voice.
Even something as strong as genocide. Even something as strong as what we previously called apartheid is comparable to the way Muslim Palestinians are being treated. When you look at that and you see how there is that disparity in treatment. These are Muslim lives. Is tie really to much to expect to see life being treated equally. It is really to much to expect that. That is what we see. The way the media talks about this topic you suddenly see the Palestinians die. You see that random strikes come and kill Palestinians. Why not Israeli strikes.
The reporting in the first month after October 7th shows how awful the media framing was. Just looking at one month’s worth of broadcasting news we see how bad the media analysis was. In sha Allah you we see a whole year’s analysis. This is a problem. The way the media reports about Islam and Muslims. They do not treat Muslims as equal citizens. It continues the narrative about who we are in society.
But ultimately it is a question of politics because one of the things we have to recognise is that we will continue doing the great work Zara was talking about at the grassroots level. We will continue to be best NHS doctors, the best community workers and to contribute to society. It does not matter if you are a lazy Muslim you are still a human being. And let us just think you need to be the best of the best to be treated as an equal. But you will always be Muslim and you will continue to contribute to society.
If we don’t have that change from the top, if we don’t have that leadership in our policy dealing with these issues how can we really change this? We really need to have changes in our education system so people can understand Muslims in our society. We have to have political changes across the board.
But what do we have at the moment when it comes to politics? We have so many many changes on the political scale. The person who has been chosen to be the leader of the Conservative Party has hugely problematic views about Muslims. That is just the Conservative party. There is really a structural Islamophobia problem. Again and again we see examples of disgusting Islamophobia not being dealt with in the party.
Not just the Conservative Party. Something called the Labour Muslim Network did a big report and identified huge issues of Islamophobia within the Labour Party. These are things that are fundamental to the UK political structure. To many parties have huge accusations of Islamophobia against them. And if you can’t get that sorted that is where change will also happen. We need to do the grassroots work. We need to improve our media. But we need leadership to change things for the better.
While the long term generational improvements will continue to take place because the education will get better, because the contribution will get better. Muslims are part of our society. Young Muslims are invigorating the next generation. We also have to recognise how important it is to remove these barriers whether in politics, in education or in media. Or through all the different structures that are out there.
And that is where we hope to do much more in the coming years ahead. Hopefully that gave you a bit of whistle stop tour and was helpful in shaping how I see British Muslim contributions in the UK.
*Zara Mohammed is the first female, youngest and first Scottish Secretary-General of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB). She obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Law & Politics in 2013 from the University of Strathclyde. She also did her Master’s degree at the same university in Human Rights Law in 2014. After working in the charitable sector for several years, she has set up a consultancy with a focus on developing excellence in leadership, better governance, and improving equality and diversity in the workplace.
**Miqdaad Versi is director for media monitoring at the Muslim Council of Britain. As well as holding the position as one of the council’s active public representatives, Versi is also engaged with the media voicing concerns over the misrepresentation of Muslims. The Guardian described him as “the UK’s one-man Islamophobia media monitor.” Versi occasionally writes opinion pieces for the Guardian and the Independent. He is a board member of Rights Watch UK. Versi also runs a travel agency in north-west London full-time. He grew up in Harrow, London in an Indian family. His father moved to the UK from east Africa in the 1970s and worked as an engineer. His mother worked as a nursery teacher. He read mathematics at the University of Oxford. During his university studies, in pursuit of his interest in Islamic jurisprudence, Versi spent one year in Damascus, Syria learning Arabic and Islamic law. He later worked for Oliver Wyman and then for the Royal Bank of Scotland.
