Refutations of racism in the 'Muslim question'

Patterns of Prejudice

Volumn 43, Issue 3-4, 2009, Pages 335-354

  Meer, Nasar ^a   Modood, Tariq ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Anti Muslim prejudice; Antisemitism; Islam; Islamophobia; Muslims; Race; Racism

Indexed keywords

EID: 70350539516     PISSN: 0031322X     EISSN: 14617331     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00313220903109250     Document Type: Article

References (89)

1. Romano Prodi, 'A union of minorities', speech delivered at the 'Seminar on Europe*/Against Anti-Semitism, for a Union of Diversity', Brussels, 19 February 2004.
2. Matti Bunzl, Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia: Hatreds Old and New in Europe (Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press 2007).
3. Matti Bunzl, 'Between anti-Semitism and Islamophobia: some thoughts on the new Europe', American Ethnologist, vol. 32, no. 4, 2005, 499-508 (502).
4. Ibid. The same cannot be said of these European parties' attitudes to Muslims in Europe. See, for example, statements issued by the Austrian Freiheitliche Partei Ö sterreichs (FPÖ) on the prospect of Turkey's accession to the EU; the Belgian Vlaams Belang's comment that 'Islam is now the no. 1 enemy not only of Europe but of the world'; and the Front National (FN) literature on the 'Islamization of France': see Bunzl, Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, 1-47.
5. Parallels can be found in the leading (but much less mainstream) far-right party in Britain, the British National Party (BNP), which frequently campaigns on what it describes as 'the Muslim problem': see Nasar Meer, 'Less equal than others', Index on Censorship, vol. 36, no. 2, 2007, 114-18.
6. For examples of less flagrant, more coded, but equally alarming comments made by British politicians and intellectuals, Nasar Meer, "Get off your knees!" Print media public intellectuals and Muslims in Britain', Journalism Studies, vol. 7, 2006, 35-59;
7. Nasar Meer, 'The politics of voluntary and involuntary identities: are Muslims in Britain an ethnic, racial or religious minority?', Patterns of Prejudice, vol. 42, no. 1, 2008, 61-81;
8. Nasar Meer and Tehseen Noorani, 'A sociological comparison of anti-Semitism and anti- Muslim sentiment in Britain', Sociological Review, vol. 56, no. 2, 2008, 195-219.
9. Esther Benbassa, 'Xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and racism: Europe's recurring evils?',
10. Bunzl, Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.
11. Jerome A. Chanes, Antisemitism: A Reference Handbook (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO 2004).
12. Clive D. Field, 'Islamophobia in contemporary Britain: the evidence of the opinion polls, 1988_/2006', Islam and Christian_/Muslim Relations, vol. 18, no. 4, 2007, 447-77 (465).
13. For example, the Community Security Trust (CST) recorded 547 antisemitic incidents during 2007, the second highest annual total since it began monitoring anti-Semitic incidents in 1984. These incidents included cases of extreme violence, assault, damage and desecration of property, threats and abusive behaviour. CST, Antisemitic Incidents Report 2007 (London: CST 2008), available on the CST website at www.thecst.org.uk/ docs/Incidents%5FReport%5F07.pdf (viewed 16 April 2009).
14. All-Party Parliamentary Group against Antisemitism, Report of the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism (London: Stationery Office 2006), available online at www.thepcaa.org/Report.pdf (viewed 16 April 2009).
15. See also the documentary 'The war on Britain's Jews', broadcast in Britain on Channel 4, 9 July 2007.
16. Field, 'Islamophobia in contemporary Britain', 465 (for a detailed list of surveys, see Appendix I, 472-/5).
17. For example, in the first two weeks after the London bombings of 7/7, the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), a charity that is comparable to the CST, registered over 200 incidents. These included sixty-five cases of violent physical attacks and criminal damage, and one fatal stabbing in which the victim was accosted by attackers shouting 'Taliban'. IHRC, 'Enormous upsurge in anti-Muslim backlash' (press release), 22 July 2005, available on the IHRC website at www.ihrc.org (viewed 16 April 2009).
18. Pew Global Attitudes Project, Unfavorable Views of Jews and Muslims on the Increase in Europe (Washington, D.C.: Pew Research Center 2008), summary available online at http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?ReportID_262 (viewed 16 April 2009).
19. Randall Hansen, 'The Danish cartoon controversy: a defence of literal freedom', International Migration, vol. 44, no. 5, 2006, 7-16;
20. Christian Joppke, 'Limits of integration policy: Britain and her Muslims', Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, vol. 35, no. 3, 2009, 453-72;
21. Kenan Malik, 'Are Muslims hated?', broadcast on Channel 4's 30 Minutes, 8 January 2005, transcript available online at www.kenanmalik.com/tv/c4_islamophobia.html (viewed 16 April 2009).
22. Diane Abbott, Hansard (HC), 21 June 2005, col. 681;
23. David Davis, Hansard (HC), 21 June 2005, col. 686;
24. Bob Marshall-Andrews, Hansard (HC), 21 June 2005, col. 676;
25. Polly Toynbee, 'My right to offend a fool', Guardian, 10 June 2005;
26. Polly Toynbee, 'In defence of Islamophobia', Independent, 23 October 1997.
27. See, for example, calls from the outgoing head of MI5, Dame Eliza Mannigham-Buller, for the police to develop a network of Muslim spies who could provide intelligence on their co-religionists: Richard Ford and Michael Evans, 'Recruit Muslim spies in war on terror, urges new security chief', The Times, 9 July 2007.
28. This suggestion followed the disclosure that a number of British intelligence agencies had monitored over 100,000 British Muslims making the pilgrimage to Mecca (see David Leppard, 'Terror watch on Mecca pilgrims', The Times, 21 January 2007),
29. That there had been an unpopular attempt by the Department of Education to encourage universities to report 'Asianlooking' students suspected of involvement in 'Islamic political radicalism' (see Vikram Dodd, 'Universities urged to spy on Muslims', Guardian, 16 October 2006).
30. This is compounded by the astonishing number of instances of the 'stop and search' of 'Asians' (categorization by religion is not used for instances of 'stop and search'), which, between 2001 and 2002, increased in London by 41 per cent: Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA), Report of the MPA Scrutiny on MPS Stop and Search Practice (London: MPA 2004), 21, available on the MPA website at http://www.mpa.gov.uk/ downloads/issues/stop-search/stop-search-report-2004.pdf (viewed 16 April 2009).
31. The national figures point to a 25 per cent increase in the 'stop and search' of people self-defining as 'Other': Home Office, Statistics on Race and the Criminal Justice System*/2005: A Home Office Publication under Section 95 of the Criminal Justice Act 1991 (London: Home Office 2006), 24, available on the Home Office website at www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs06/s95race05.pdf (viewed 16 April 2009).
32. (The category 'Other' can include Muslims of Turkish, Arabic or North African ethnic origin, among others; while 68 per cent of the British Muslim population have a South Asian background, the remaining minority are comprised of several 'Other' categories.) These examples would seem to support Junaid Rana's conclusion that 'current practices of racial profiling in the War on Terror perpetuate a logic that demands the ability to define what a Muslim looks like from appearance and visual cues. This is not based purely on superficial cultural markers such as religious practice, clothing, language, and identification. A notion of race is at work in the profiling of Muslims': Junaid Rana, 'The story of Islamophobia', Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society, vol. 9, no. 2, 2007, 148-62 (149).
33. See Meer, 'The politics of voluntary and involuntary identities';
34. Meer, 'Less equal than others';
35. Meer, 'Get off your knees!'.
36. Brian Klug, 'The collective Jew: Israel and the new antisemitism', Patterns of Prejudice, vol. 37, no. 2, 2003, 1-19 (6).
37. Geoffrey Brahm Levey and Tariq Modood, 'Liberal democracy, multicultural citizenship and the Danish cartoon affair', in Geoffrey Brahm Levey and Tariq Modood (eds), Secularism, Religion and Multicultural Citizenship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2008), 216-42 (239).
38. Klug offers the following: 'The logic of anti-Semitism does not work like this: "The Rothschilds are powerful and exploitive, hence Jews in general are." But more like this: "Jews are powerful and exploitive, just look at the Rothschilds." In other words, anti-Semites do not generalize from instances. They are disposed to see Jews in a certain negative light, which is why I call their prejudice "a priori"': Brian Klug, 'Anti- Semitism-new or old?', The Nation, 12 April 2004, 20 (Letters).
39. Levey and Modood, 'Liberal democracy, multicultural citizenship and the Danish cartoon affair', 239.
40. John E. Richardson, 'On delineating "reasonable" and "unreasonable" criticisms of Muslims', Fifth-Estate-Online, August 2006, at www.fifth-estate-online.co.uk/criticsm/ ondelineatingreasonableandunreasonable.html (viewed 15 April 2009).
41. Rana, 'The story of Islamophobia', 148.
42. Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia, Islamophobia: A Challenge For Us All (London: Runnymede Trust 1997), 4.
43. The eight statements are: 1) Islam is seen as a monolithic bloc, static and unresponsive to change. 2) Islam is seen as separate and 'other'. It does not have values in common with other cultures, is not affected by them and does not influence them. 3) Islam is seen as inferior to the West. It is seen as barbaric, irrational, primitive and sexist. 4) Islam is seen as violent, aggressive, threatening, supportive of terrorism and engaged in a 'clash of civilizations'. 5) Islam is seen as a political ideology and is used for political or military advantage. 6) Criticisms made of the West by Islam are rejected out of hand. 7) Hostility towards Islam is used to justify discriminatory practices towards Muslims and exclusion of Muslims from mainstream society. 8) Anti-Muslim hostility is seen as natural or normal.
44. Baroness Uddin, quoted in Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia, Islamophobia: Issues, Challenges and Action (Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham Books 2004), 3.
45. Matti Bunzl, 'Methods and politics', American Ethnologist, vol. 32, no. 4, 2005, 534 (a rejoinder to Bunzl, 'Between anti-Semitism and Islamophobia').
46. For example, does hostility to all religion ipso facto make one an Islamophobe?
47. William I. Ozanne, 'Review of Confronting Islamophobia in Educational Practice [ed. Barry van Driel, 2004]', Comparative Education, vol. 42, no. 2, May 2006, 283, 283;
48. Haleh Afshar, Rob Aitken and Myfanwy Franks, 'Feminisms, Islamophobia and identities', Political Studies, vol. 53, no. 2, 2005, 262-83.
49. Martin Reisigl and Ruth Wodak, Discourse and Discrimination: Rhetorics of Racism and Antisemitism (London: Routledge 2001), 6.
50. Fred Halliday, 'Islamophobia reconsidered', Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 22, no. 5, 1999, 892-902.
51. Ibid., 898 (emphasis in the original).
52. Nasar Meer and Tariq Modood, 'The multicultural state we're in: Muslims, "multiculture", and the "civic re-balancing" of British multiculturalism', Political Studies (forthcoming).
53. See also Malik, 'Are Muslims hated?': in this television documentary, Malik argued that 'the Islamic Human Rights Commission monitored just 344 Islamophobic attacks in the 12 months following 9/11*/most of which were minor incidents like shoving or spitting. That's 344 too many*/but it's hardly a climate of uncontrolled hostility towards Muslims.... It's not Islamophobia, but the perception that it blights Muslim lives, that creates anger and resentment. That's why it's dangerous to exaggerate the hatred of Muslims. Even more worrying is the way that the threat of Islamophobia is now being used to stifle criticism of Islam.' Malik is not alone in holding this view and there are several problematic issues that arise in his analysis that may also be evident elsewhere (see Joppke, 'Limits of integration policy', and Hansen, 'The Danish cartoon controversy'). For example, it is easy to complain that Muslims exaggerate Islamophobia without noting that they are no more likely to do so than others who might exaggerate colourracism, antisemitism, sexism, ageism, homophobia or many other forms of discrimination. That is, his claim remains a political rather than a reasonably informed empirical one. Second, and more important, Malik limits Islamophobia to violent attacks and ignores its discursive character in prejudicing, stereotyping, direct and indirect discrimination, exclusion from networks and so on, and the many nonphysical ways in which discrimination operates. Third, Malik draws on data gathered prior to the events of 7/7; according to the same source (the Islamic Human Rights Commission) and using the same indices, the number of incidents radically increased in the first two weeks after the bombings (see note 11).
54. In all fairness to Halliday, this may not easily have been anticipated in 1999, when his '"Islamophobia" reconsidered' was published.
55. Christopher Allen and Jørgen S. Nielsen, Summary Report on Islamophobia in the EU after 11 September 2001 (Vienna: European Union Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia 2002), 16.
56. Ibid., 35
57. Attitudes towards British Muslims', a survey conducted by YouGov for the Islamic Society of Great Britain, 31 October_/1 November 2002 (n_1,890), report available on the Islamic Society website at www.isb.org.uk/iaw/docs/SurveyIAW2002.pdf (viewed 16 April 2009);
58. Vikram Dodd, 'Muslims face more suspicion', Guardian, 5 November 2002.
59. NOP poll conducted for the Daily Telegraph, 8_/10 October 2001 (n=600);
60. Anthony King, 'Briton's views of Muslims unchanged after US attacks', Daily Telegraph, 12 October 2001.
61. Field, 'Islamophobia in contemporary Britain', 455.
62. Meer and Noorani, 'A sociological comparison of anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim sentiment in Britain'.
63. Tariq Modood, Multicultural Politics: Racism, Ethnicity and Muslims in Britain (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 2005), 9-10.
64. Rana, 'The story of Islamophobia'.
65. As should antisemitism, though this is not the primary focus of this article.
66. For a fuller discussion of the role of journalists, see Meer, '"Get off your knees!"'. The Guardian is probably the only national newspaper in which the issue of anti-Muslim sentiment is taken seriously. Yet even here prevailing opinions are clearly divided among its columnists, with Madeline Bunting, Gary Younge, Seamus Milne and Jonathan Freedland considering it to be an issue of real concern, and Polly Toynbee, Catherine Bennett and Timothy Garton Ash, among others, considering it to be much less so. This is in contrast to its sister paper, the Observer, particularly in the writings of Will Hutton and Nick Cohen, who view it as a misconception.
67. This research was funded the by the European Commission and forms part of EMILIE: A European Approach to Multicultural Citizenship: Legal Political and Educational Challenges, Contract no. CIT5-CT-2005-02820.
68. The case study of incitement to religious hatred legislation in Meer, 'The politics of voluntary and involuntary identities', and Modood's rejoinder in the discussion of the Danish cartoon affair, 'Obstacles to multicultural integration', International Migration, vol. 44, no. 5, 2006, 51-62.
69. For example, Polly Toynbee, writing in the Guardian, has stated that she reserves the 'right' to offend religious minorities on matters of faith because 'race is something people cannot choose and it defines nothing about them as people. But beliefs are what people choose to identify with... The two cannot be blurred into one which is why the word Islamophobia is a nonsense' (Toynbee, 'My right to offend a fool'). Elsewhere she has proclaimed: 'I am an Islamophobe and proud of it!' (Toynbee, 'In defence of Islamophobia').
70. Of course, how Muslims respond to these circumstances will vary. Some will organize resistance, while others will try to stop looking like Muslims (the equivalent of 'passing' for white); some will build an ideology out of their subordination, others will not, just as a woman can choose to be a feminist or not. Again, some Muslims may define their Islam in terms of piety rather than politics; just as some women may see no politics in their gender, while for others their gender will be at the centre of their politics.
71. Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Michael Burleigh has similarly stated: 'Those claiming to speak for the Muslim community have played to the traditional Left-wing imagination by conjuring up the myth of "far-Right extremism". In reality, evidence for "Islamophobia" as distinct from a justified fear of radical Islamist terrorism or a desire to protect our freedoms, institutions and values from those who hold them in contempt is anecdotal and slight': Michael Burleigh, 'Religious hatred bill is being used to buy Muslim votes', Daily Telegraph, 9 December 2004.
72. Reisigl and Wodak, Discourse and Discrimination; Halliday, "'Islamophobia" reconsidered'.
73. Halliday, '"Islamophobia" reconsidered'
74. For a discussion of these sentiments in relation to the Danish cartoon affair, see Modood, 'Obstacles to multicultural integration'.
75. Bhikhu Parekh, 'Europe, liberalism and the "Muslim question"', in Tariq Modood, Anna Triandafyllidou and Ricard Zapata-Barrero (eds), Multiculturalism, Muslims and Citizenship: A European Approach (London: Routledge 2006), 180, 181.
76. This is also supported in survey findings that report anxiety over the intensity of Muslim religiosity. Clive Field notes that 'in G-2004h [Populus survey for The Times, 'Political attitudes', 2_/4 April 2004 (n_1,045)], 70% acknowledged that they seemed to take their faith more seriously than Christians, while in G-2005b [Populus survey for The Times, 15-16 April 2005 (n_714)], 28% had a concern about the presence of those with strong Muslim beliefs. In G-2005c [Pew Global Attitudes Project survey, 'Islamic extremism', conducted 25 April_/7 May 2005 by NOP (n_750)], 80% felt that British Muslims had a keen sense of Islamic identity, which was still growing (63%) and which had to be reckoned as a "bad thing" (56%), with the potential to lead to violence and loss of personal freedoms and to act as a barrier to integration' (Field, 'Islamophobia in contemporary Britain', 457).
77. Field, 'Islamophobia in contemporary Britain', 453.
78. See Tariq Modood, 'Multicultural citizenship and the anti-sharia storm', openDemocracy, 14 February 2008, at www.opendemocracy.net/article/faith_ideas/ europe_islam/anti_sharia_storm (viewed 17 April 2009).
79. In another part of the interview the broadcast journalist states: 'I think the [broadcaster] has been through an interesting phase which echoes that slight changethat I've been talking about in the last few years which is I think there was a belief that we had to promote multiculturalism: that it was our job to try and do lots of stories about how lovely it was to have lots of people from different cultures in Britain and not report too much what tensions there were, certainly not allow the voices of those people who had concerns about the changing nature of their high street or whatever it was. I think that has changed over the last couple of years. I think there has been, quite rightly, a change of view that we do need in the corporation to ensure that we reflect whatever tensions and anxieties and indeed prejudices that may exist within British society and a recognition that for people to question, for instance, the level of immigration into this country is not of itself beyond the pale. That is a legitimate position for someone to hold and, indeed, has become a pretty central political discussion right now.'
80. Field, 'Islamophobia in contemporary Britain', 459.
81. Richard Jackson, 'Constructing enemies: "Islamic terrorism" in political and academic discourse', Government and Opposition, vol. 42, no. 3, 2007, 394-426.
82. Melanie Phillips, 'After the Rushdie affair, Islam in Britain became fused with an agenda of murder', Observer, 28 May 2006.
83. Elizabeth Poole, Reporting Islam: Media Representations of Muslims (London and New York: I. B. Tauris 2002), 4.
84. See Fred Halliday, Islam and the Myth of Confrontation: Religion and Politics in the Middle East (London and New York: I. B. Tauris 2003), 107.
85. See Melanie Phillips, Londonistan: How Britain Is Creating a Terror State Within (London: Gibson Square 2006);
86. Michael Gove, Celsius 7/7 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson 2006);
87. Nick Cohen, What's Left? How Liberals Lost Their Way (London: HarperPerennial 2007);
88. Andrew Anthony, The Fallout: How a Guilty Liberal Lost His Innocence (London: Jonathan Cape 2007).
89. Field, 'Islamophobia in contemporary Britain', 457.