The Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) held its annual Islamophobia Conference yesterday with panelists warning about the dangers Muslims face when publicly defending their faith, politics or the Palestinian cause.
The conference titled “The Vanishing Public Muslim” aimed to explore the various restrictions placed on British Muslims to suppress their voice and presence in the public sphere.
The UK’s Prevent initiative on extremism, censorship efforts in France, Germany and India, as well as global rise in Islamophobia amid the genocide in Gaza were high on the agenda.
Journalist and film-maker Myriam Francois warned the audience regarding the use of social media by activists wanting to speak up for Islamic issues like Gaza.
“We should be under no illusion that although social media appears to be a space where we are organising, where we are sharing information for the (Palestine) movement, it is also clearly a space where we are being watched very closely and where we are being profiled. Information is being gathered on us, our connections, what we share and what posts we like.”
Francois also highlighted the growing hostility towards Muslims in mainstream political or media environments and said that any Muslim who becomes too vocal about their faith can face career damage.
Subscribe to our newsletter and stay updated on the latest news and updates from around the Muslim world!
“To speak as a Muslim today is dangerous, we have to be honest about that. We are barely allowed to speak along political lines in the accepted spectrum of politics but if you enter the political mainstream and dare to suggest that your values as a Muslim are your driving force of your ideals then you are immediately considered a problematic entity.”
Islamophobia surge amid Gaza genocide
Since 2014, the IHRC has organised the annual conference to discuss key issues with regard to structural and institutionalised Islamophobia.
Each conference has been co-organised with Scotland Against Criminalising Communities (SACC) and Decolonial International Network (DIN).
Hate crimes against Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim in the United Kingdom are up by 140 percent compared with this time last year, according to British police.
A UK anti-Islamophobia organisation Tell MAMA has received a sevenfold increase in reports of Islamophobia since October 7, when Hamas fighters attacked southern Israel, killing 1,139 people and taking 240 others captive.
Since then, more than 20,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, including at least 8,000 children, according to health officials in the enclave.
Raza Kazim, a spokesman for the IHRC, expressed support for one of the conference’s main points – that the Western world has failed to honour it’s role as a self-described bastion of human rights on the world stage.
“What is being preached to in our communities is about these Western standards, liberal standards, democratic standards but when the stress test of Gaza is applied to each one of those labels, it fails. Every single one (of these Western principles) have failed when it comes to Gaza.”
In the United States, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim civil rights group, said it had received 2,171 complaints of Islamophobia and anti-Arab bias since October 7, a 172 percent increase since the previous year.
Last month three Palestinian men were shot in Vermont, and around the same period, Stuart Seldowitz, a former adviser to President Barak Obama, was captured on video taunting and threatening a fast food vendor in Manhattan with Islamophobic abuse.
Other examples of anti-Arab/Islamophobic hate crimes include attacks or harassment of Muslim pro-Palestine activists.
In November, a Polish American woman who attacked an Arab couple in Chicago for wearing a Palestine hoodie has been charged with a hate crime.
While in the UK, an Islamophobe who was filed during a vile racist tirade against hijabi women wearing Palestinian scarfs and keffiyeh, Terry Eury, walked free from court after being given a suspended custodial sentence for pleading guilty.
During the rant, Eury called the women “Muslim c**ts and “terrorists”. Adding that “this is a Muslim country.”
Speaking to 5Pillars, the head of the IHRC, Massoud Shadjareh urged the Muslim community to rally and tackle this disturbing rise of hate against Islam.
“The reality is we need to challenge this. We are not going to tackle this by sitting around a table with the government and having nice cups of tea and biscuits. We need to organise, we need to defend ourselves as a community. We need to strengthen ourselves with activism and with legal structures to support our activism. That is what we are trying to achieve here at the IHRC.”
‘Islamophobic’ news channel
The role in which TV and media plays in spreading Islamophobia is considered well established.
A view reinforced this week after a major right-wing British news channel, GB News, were embroiled in an Islamophobia row.
New research produced by the Centre for Media Monitoring (CFMM) says there is “structural and systematic bias in GB News reporting about British Muslims.”
The study, conducted over two years, speaks of “excessive” focus on Muslims bordering on an “obsession” that “regularly demonises their beliefs.”
Stories about Islam are “overwhelmingly negative” and fail to understand the diverse nature of Muslim communities in the UK, the report says.
GB News has responded to the report by calling the allegations “defamatory” and an attempt to silence free speech.
Addressing this latest news story, panellist Francois questioned the whole purpose of the financially “failing” channel.
“GB News is an outfit which makes no money. It is a channel which has money pumped into it but doesn’t make any money for those who do fund it. So connect the dots. Why would anyone pump money into a failing channel of which the majority of the output is essentially the demonisation of Muslims and other minorities.”
