Opinion - Leader Page Articles   

This is no way to treat us, say U.K. Muslims

On the third anniversary of the London bombings, Britain’s Channel 4 screened an hour-long programme rhetorically titled “It Shouldn’t Happen to a Muslim” about the rise of anti-Muslim sentiment in the country since the fateful day on July 7, 2005 when four British-born Muslims of Pakistani origin blew themselves up on the London Underground killing 53 people in what, with a little journalistic licence, has been described as Britain’s worst terror attack in living memory.

The programme made and presented, ironically, by a right-wing journalist Peter Oborne, portrayed a picture of a community under siege, frightened and slightly puzzled why everyone hates it. More worryingly, we saw a Britain polarised along anti-Muslim lines. Apparently, it is not just white Britons and the racist British National Party thugs who have problems with Muslims but even many non-Muslim Asians don’t like them. A non-Muslim family of Indian immigrants from Leicester was outspoken about what it thought about Muslims. “We’re scared of them,” a woman sneered, adding: “We’ve been too quiet … it’s now time to speak up.”

Muslims, in turn, spoke of being scared of everyone else and, according to a poll which accompanied the programme, 60 per cent Muslims believed that there had been a marked increase in Islamophobia since 7/7; and 36 per cent said they had personally suffered hostility. One white Muslim convert, Ayesha Bano, told the programme that she stopped wearing the veil after being subjected to “harassment.” She said it became impossible for her to step out of her home without being taunted and abused. “This happened in front of my children and I couldn’t explain to them what was going on. So I stopped wearing the burqa,” she said.

All Muslims interviewed by Mr. Oborne complained that the community was being unfairly “targeted” for the actions of a few bad apples. “Why are we being painted with the same brush as terrorists?” asked Nabila Khan, a young woman in hijab. She said she was born and brought up in Britain and was hurt at being treated like a terrorist. Most said they felt “threatened” and lived in fear. Some said they were contemplating leaving Britain.

“I’m so scared … I feel everybody is my enemy,” said Sarfaraz Sarwar, a middle-aged community elder from Basildon (Essex). He said he had faced abuse; an attempt was made to “firebomb” his house; his car was vandalised; and the walls of his property were covered with abusive graffiti. Mr. Oborne described him as a “pillar” of the local Muslim community and a “patently decent man” whose wife runs an old people’s home. “His only crime is his religious faith,” he said, as Mr. Sarwar gave him a tour of his house which he has now “fortified” with steel gates, high fences and CCTV cameras.

The sense of fear, we were told, was so pervasive that even the police had not failed to notice it. Andy Hayman, a former senior officer of the Metropolitan Police who investigated the 7/7 attacks, said the words of a young Muslim still rang in his ears. “He told me: ‘it’s like this: we just wait for the police to come and shoot at us’.”

But the most controversial intervention came from a Muslim Minister who claimed that many Muslims felt as threatened as “the Jews of Europe” once did. Shahid Malik, a Minister in the Department of International Development, said: “I think most people would agree that if you ask Muslims today what do they feel like, they feel like the Jews of Europe … I don’t mean to equate that with the Holocaust but in the way that it was legitimate almost — and still is in some parts — to target Jews, many Muslims would say that we feel the exact same way. Somehow, there’s a message out there that it’s ok to target people as long as it’s Muslims.”

Mr. Malik, who is of Pakistani descent but was born and grew up in Britain, recalled his own encounters with Islamophobia, including an attempt to set his car on fire. “I regularly get hate mail and have been abused and sworn at,” he said. He accused the media of fuelling anti-Muslim hostility alleging that they routinely “invented” stories portraying Muslims in a negative light. He, then, referred to a report which was widely carried in the national press last December claiming that the staff of a hospital in his constituency had been ordered to turn the beds of Muslim patients towards Mecca five times a day.

The story, he said, was without any basis. “There was perhaps one old Muslim woman who was dying and someone suggested that her bed could be turned to face the Mecca,” he said pointing out that no newspaper cared to check the facts or carry a correction when the report was found to be baseless. “It’s almost as if you don’t have to check your facts when it comes to certain people, and you can just run with those stories. It makes Muslims feel like aliens in their own country,” he fumed.

Mr. Oborne described the negative media portrayal of Muslims as the single-most important cause behind many of the misconceptions about the community. He listed a number of newspaper reports which, according to him, illustrated the “systematic demonisation” of Muslims by the media. In one report, it was sensationally claimed that “hundreds” of patients at a hospital in Leicester risked catching infection because of the refusal of its Muslim staff to observe new hygiene rules on religious grounds. The report was rubbished by hospital authorities, and they were incensed that most newspapers ignored the denial put out by the hospital.

The second story was equally absurd. It claimed that a leading British bank had abandoned its “piggy bank” scheme because of pressure from Muslims who regarded pig as unclean. The fact, Mr. Oborne pointed out, was that the scheme was still very much alive with the bank openly displaying little piggy-banks on hoardings and in newspaper advertisements. Muslims denied that they ever objected to it.

Mr. Oborne noted this was what he meant by “demonisation” of Muslims. “The systematic demonisation of Muslims has become an important part of the central narrative of the British political and media class; it is so entrenched, so much part of normal discussion, that almost nobody notices. Protests go unheard and unnoticed,” he thundered.

Arguing that Islamophobia had become “acceptable,” he said the language often used to describe Muslims would not be tolerated if it was used in relation to other groups such as the Jews. Mr. Oborne’s parting kick was to urge fellow Britons to introspect about how they were treating Muslims: “We should all feel ashamed about the way we treat Muslims, in the media, in our politics, and on our streets. We do not treat Muslims with the tolerance, decency and fairness that we often like to boast is the British way. We urgently need to change our public culture.”

But how accurate is this picture? Is British society really so unremittingly Islamophobic?

The difficulty with this type of agenda-driven journalism is that it ends up being too one-sided and runs into a credibility problem. No matter how laudable the cause, whether it is about defending minorities, fighting communalism or protecting human rights, unless contending viewpoints are allowed to be aired it degenerates into propaganda. And this is what happens to Mr. Oborne’s — undoubtedly well-meaning — effort. He sets out to prove that Britain is in the grip of virulent Islamophobia and the whole programme is then tailored to produce evidence that would hold up his theory.

As The Independent columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, herself a strident critic of the way Muslims are often treated, pointed out, the programme was “too simplistic, too scattergun and out of touch with where British Muslims seem to be at present.”

Yes, of course, there is Islamophobia. Yes, Muslims are angry and alienated. And there is no denying that sections of the media have a strong anti-Muslim bias as is evident from the stories mentioned above. But it is also a fact that a majority of Britain’s 1.6 million Muslims lead normal lives; and, by and large, the national media are liberal and stand up for Muslims when they are unfairly targeted. Indeed, there are Muslims who believe that the climate has started to change for the better. And, according to Ms Alibhai-Brown, who had wanted to leave Britain at one stage, suddenly “it feels good to be both a Muslim and a Brit.”

How come Mr. Oborne never got round to meeting any cheerful Muslim?

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Dialogue continues despite strain
Moment of truth
This is no way to treat us, say U.K. Muslims
Nothing in the nuclear agreements prevents us from conducting further tests: Manmohan
Corrections and clarifications
Trust vote
Shameful

Copyright © 2008, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu