1

Hate crime is unfortunately a persistent problem in London. Despite our city’s incredible diversity, there are conflicts that emerge from misunderstanding and misrepresentation of others’ identities. We commend the Mayor’s office for taking steps in working on this important issue and believe generally that the plan outlined will serve to help reduce hate crime in the long term.

Tell MAMA monitors anti-Muslim attacks across the United Kingdom. In addition, we serve the Muslim community as a third-party reporting service, offering a hotline for victims to call in, contributing recording of anti-Muslim hate crimes and incidents, and conducting research and analysis on the broad areas of anti-Muslim hate and Islamophobia. Anti-Muslim hate has emerged as a significant problem since September 11th, 2001. Since this time, Islamophobia has grown significantly and is strong today in small, worrying political circles particularly on the far-right. Anti-Muslim abuse, hate crimes and incidents can be an everyday concern for Muslim Londoners, who experience it on the Tube, at work, and in their neighbourhoods. While Muslims do experience a significant level of hate incidents, we recognise that tackling anti-Muslim hate must be done in concert with addressing and reducing homophobic hate, hate directed at the disabled, anti-Semitism and racist hate crimes.

In this report, we critically review the draft hate crime strategy presented by MOPAC and offer our concerns and suggestions as an agency with a mandate to serve victims of anti-Muslim hate. We feel that the strategy thus far is an excellent and encouraging development. However, there are specificities to anti-Muslim hate that need to be covered in the strategy that are currently missing. We believe that with the incorporation of the following points in the overall strategy, MOPAC can push for a hate crime reduction strategy that recognises the specificity of all types of hate crime while simultaneously increasing capacity to support the recording and prosecution of hate crimes that affect all of London’s diverse communities.

Summary of Tell MAMA’s recommendations to MOPAC:

x Racial and religious hate crime should not be understood as a whole. Rather, all data must be broken down by particular hate crime strands: anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic, anti-Asian, or anti-Black, etc. The nature of hate crime demands an approach that treats any kind of racial or religious hate in its specificity. The same would apply to other strands of hate crime.

x Future crime surveys must address the question of under-reporting and do so by breaking down any statistics by religious group, sexual orientation, disability, and ethnicity in order to effectively understand why certain communities that are victims of hate are not reporting hate crime.

x Political groups on the far-right present a specific threat to Muslim communities. While in the twentieth century they were responsible for anti-Semitic vitriol and hate, after the 9/11 and 7/7 attacks far-right groups have shifted their hate towards Muslims.

x MOPAC’s strategy must take into account the broader, discursive conditions from which hate emerges. We commend MOPAC’s commitment to combating online hate crime as social media is one site where anti-Muslim discussion is prolific and organised.

x Geopolitical events often lead to significant outbursts of hate against racial and religious groups. The police should be aware of how geopolitical conflict might affect community cohesion in London and be proactive in taking preventive measures. MOPAC should encourage interfaith and intercommunity organisations in civil society to take responsibility

2

for opening dialogue and combating hate, working with police to counter hate instigated by far-away events.

x With specific regard to anti-Muslim hate crime, existing laws often make it difficult to determine whether a hate crime is racially or religiously motivated. While it is outside the scope of MOPAC and this consultation to suggest changes in legislation, the police must understand that Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hate is an extension of a broader phenomenon we should understand as ‘cultural racism’.

We would like to reiterate that the existing strategy for hate crime reduction takes outstanding steps towards combating hate crime. Nevertheless, Tell MAMA’s specific experience with the Muslim community suggests a few additional measures that can be taken to better protect the Muslim community and at the same time provide resources to combat hate crime that can be beneficial for all victims. The remainder of our consultation response is divided into specific sections that address each of the Hate Crime Reduction Strategy’s objectives and offer evidence for why our recommendations are warranted based on the data and insight we have gleaned over two years of supporting victims of anti-Muslim hate.

Tell MAMA’s potential contributions to MOPAC on tackling hate crime:

1. Reporting and victim services and forwarding cases to the police 2. Social media monitoring 3. Research and analysis on the far right and the risks that it presents 4. Restorative justice programmes to work towards transforming hate and eliminating it in

the long term 5. Understanding and explanation of specificities of anti-Muslim hate crime to better

protect Muslim Londoners

Objective 1: addressing under-reporting of hate crime

The under-reporting of anti-Muslim hate is a significant problem though there have been significant strides in improving the situation, not least the introduction of a separate ‘Islamophobic crimes’ flag by the Metropolitan Police Service (as well as other police force areas around the country). While page 5 of the draft strategy demonstrates that ‘racist and religious hate crimes are the most reported hate crimes’, while ‘transgender and disability hate crimes are least reported,’ there are significant racial disparities in hate crime reporting that may obscure the immense problem of under-reporting in Muslim communities. For example, many British Muslims feel that abuse and other low-intensity hate incidents are too trivial to report to the police, which is a well-documented reason for not reporting hate crime among the general population. In addition, the number of hate crime incidents across all strands reported to the police has fallen by 11 percentage points since 2007.1

There are few well-established services that specifically cater to Muslim victims. Further, there is a general lack of awareness about these services like TrueVision in the Muslim community and understanding about what hate crime actually is.2 In addition, the Muslim community has had a specific and problematic relationship with policing in the last decade as counter-terrorism 1 Home Office, Office of National Statistics and Ministry of Justice, "An Overview of Hate Crime in England and Wales - Appendix Tables," (2013): Table 1.08. 2 J Githens-Mazer and B Lambert, Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Hate Crime: a London Case Study, (Exeter: European Muslim Research Centre, 2010): 41. See also Home Office, Office for National Statistics and Ministry of Justice, "An Overview of Hate Crimes in England and Wales," (2013): 48.

3

policy has positioned them as a ‘suspect community,’ with Muslims often being subject to intense scrutiny by the police working to counter ‘radicalisation’ and ‘terrorism’.3 By positioning Muslims as objects of national security, it is argued that the police have undermined Muslims’ trust.4 While this problem is beginning to be addressed and trust is being established5 as police forces have begun to take the alienation of the Muslim community in policing policy more seriously, data demonstrates that it is unlikely that European Muslims will go to the police over a hate crime:

11% of all Muslim respondents [in the European Union] considered that they were a victim of a racial motivated assault, threat or serious harassment in the last 12 months…although in percentage terms the number may not appear to be so high, in real terms, if we translate this to the entire Muslim population…the level of victimisation would extend into thousands of cases every year that are not recorded by the police as racist incidents.6

While this information comes from an EU-wide study that did not survey British Muslims, the findings are germane to hate crime policing in London. This underscores that third-party reporting services have a crucial role to play in addressing the needs of Muslim victims who are vastly under-reporting hate crime. Community-specific reporting services can go a long way in encouraging Muslims to report hate crime. Tell MAMA, which was established in 2011 is gaining traction, but awareness is still lacking. This is a problem that could be addressed through partnership with MOPAC in awareness-raising campaigns.

The strategy is also right to point to the specific needs of new migrant communities coming into the UK that are often demonised in the media. Often, because they are fresh to the UK, they may not even be aware that hate crime is a punishable offence.7 It is important that information is provided to migrants through various channels, such as religious organisations, about what hate crime is and what services are available to them in case they experience hate crime. It is necessary that this material be provided in multiple languages. This is an area of cooperation that MOPAC could take up with faith communities.

We feel that a key problem is the lack of studies that have taken the question of under-reporting as a central concern. This is a major omission and should be quickly addressed. However, there is an incredible diversity within ‘racial and religious groups’ that have different needs and specific contexts in which they report hate crime. Without breaking down a study of under-reporting around the disparity in reporting hate by specific hate crime strand and ethnic group (anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, homophobic, etc.), it is extremely difficult to understand which groups are under-reporting hate the most and why. In crime surveys, Muslims report a level of

3 See C Pantazis and S Pemberton, "From the 'Old' to the 'New' Suspect Community," British Journal of Criminology 49 (2009): 646-666. See also B Spalek, "Community Policing, Trust, and Muslim Communities in Relation to "New Terrorism"," Politics & Policy 38, no. 4 (2010): 789-815. 4 B Spalek and R Lambert, "Muslim communities under surveillance," Criminal Justice Matters 68, no. 1 (2007): 12-13. 5 See Parsons, T, Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Hate Crime: a London Case Study, (Exeter: European Muslim Research Centre, 2010): 46. 6 European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, "EU-MIDIS European Union Minorities and Discrimination Survey, Data in Focus Report: Muslims," (2009): 12. 7 “The majority of Muslim respondents are largely unaware that discrimination against them might be illegal. Furthermore, even more respondents are unaware of any organisation in their country that might be able to assist them if they are discriminated against,” from European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights 2009, 11. While this study focuses on Muslims outside the UK, again this point is germane, stressing that awareness is crucial to improving reporting amongst Muslims. This is also in line with the assumptions of the ONS in Crime Surveys, that most people are not aware exactly of what constitutes a hate crime. See footnote 2 for further resources.

4

experience of hate crime higher than that of all other religions; from 2011-2013, 2.4% of Muslims surveyed reported that they experienced some form of hate, double that experienced by Hindus and almost 25% higher than that experienced by religions classified in the Crime Survey of England and Wales as ‘Other’.8 Tell MAMA recorded 135 cases of in-person hate crime from 2013-2014 in the United Kingdom. Based on the evidence of the CSEW, we would expect that 2.4% of the Muslim population in London (over one million people) would experience hate crime, which is over 25,000 people.9 This number is not far off of EU-wide estimates, in which it was found that 79% of Muslim respondents did not report “their experiences of discrimination”.10 Obviously what Tell MAMA has recorded is astoundingly low: it is clear that Muslims are not reporting hate crime anywhere close to the level at which they are experiencing it. Of course, hate crimes over 25,000 is a speculative estimate based upon the available statistics; however, if the Crime Survey is any valid indication of the experience of anti-Muslim hate crime, then the drastic level of under-reporting cannot be stressed enough. This fact gets obscured when datasets around under-reporting do not take into account the disparities between communities affected under specific hate crime strands—perhaps it is the case that racial and religious hate crime is the most reported, but the measure may not necessarily hold once broken out into specific groups. It is crucial that we understand which communities are under-reporting hate crime and why. To better understand how much Muslims are under-reporting hate crime, a study focusing on why they don’t report hate is of paramount importance.

8 Home Office, Office of National Statistics and Ministry of Justice, "An Overview of Hate Crime in England and Wales - Appendix Tables," (2013): Table 1.05. 9 This figure is based on a rough estimate. To arrive at 25,000 as an estimate, we began with the latest data on population given by ONS for London, approximately 8.41 million people. ONS estimates that 12.4% of Londoners are Muslim, so we approximate just over 1 million Muslims in London. If, as the Home Office, ONS and MOJ statistics suggest, 2.4% of Muslims experience some form of hate crime, then approximately 25,000 Muslims would have experienced hate crime if we may extrapolate the information from the survey. This number is purely speculative, based on available information on population in London and trends described in the Crime Survey. However, it suggests a startling problem of under-reporting of anti-Muslim hate crime. 10 European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, "EU-MIDIS European Union Minorities and Discrimination Survey, Data in Focus Report: Muslims," (2009): 8.

5

6

7

8

Objective 2: protecting vulnerable communities and reducing repeat victimisation

The nature of hate crime in Britain today is extremely complicated. Hate does not flow from one specific group to all others like it may have done in the twentieth century, with far-right groups espousing anti-Semitic, racist and homophobic views (for example). Today, hate emerges between communities, frequently triggered by specific events. For example, anti-Muslim vitriol often that significantly hinders community cohesion and interfaith dialogue often comes from members of the far-right which is reaching out to a range of ethnic backgrounds.11 Similarly, the CST reports that some Muslims perpetrated many of the recent anti-Semitic hate crimes in the last few months.12 This means that no universal approach to hate crime can be successful, and specific approaches must be taken to mitigate specific forms of hate. In order to address how best we might treat anti-Muslim hate crime in its specificity, this section will focus on the far-right as a community that is a primary progenitor of anti-Muslim hate, with a focus on the distribution of (1) anti-Muslim literature, (2) online hate from the far-right, (3) and trigger events.

Most importantly, visibly Muslim women are the majority affected by everyday hate incidents. Of 135 (in-person) hate incidents, 54% targeted visibly Muslim women. A ‘visible’ Muslim wears obviously Islamic clothing. For women, this is usually a hijab, niqab, or burqa. For men, beards, Islamic robes and headwear often identify them as Muslim, making them targets for hate. While racism of the 20th century operated on identifying skin colour and phenotype as methods of targeting individuals for hateful attacks, today the far-right’s ‘racism’ has mutated into a form that relies on markers of cultural difference to identify targets for hate. In this section, we outline the specificity of anti-Muslim hate and explain how it operates as a form of ‘cultural racism’ that exploits cultural difference and turns it in to an object of hate. This leads to acute insecurity for Londoners expressing their religious faith and it is crucial that the ‘cultural racism’ of far-right hate be taken into account as a specific challenge that affects the Muslim community. However, while this cultural racism is strong on the far-right, it exists across public discourse, embedded in news coverage and the media.

There has been a significant and worrying proliferation of anti-Muslim literature across far-right groups across Europe. In fact, a London Elects leaflet in 2012 featuring British National Party candidate Carlos Cortiglia had a statement of support that was Islamophobic in nature from a Reverend Robert West: ‘I’m backing the British National Party because they support our traditional Christian Faith. We need strong leadership to protect our national identity from the threat of Islam’ (emphasis added).13 This leaflet is characteristic of much anti-Muslim literature that is distributed by the far-right in Britain and abroad. Currently, Britain First, a new far-right party, also distributes anti-Muslim leaflets equating Islam with violent ‘jihad’ and the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby. While these are not inciting statements under the law, they contribute to a larger discursive system by which Islamopohobia and anti-Muslim hate is made acceptable in extreme circles.

11 H S Lane, A Study of the English Defence Leage, (London: Faith Matters, 2012). 12 M Gardner, "The antisemitic pressure cooker," CST Blog, August 2014, 15, http://blog.thecst.org.uk/?p=5028 (accessed August 2014, 26). 13 London Elects, "Mayoral Candidate: Carlos Cortiglia," London Elects, www.londonelects.org.uk/mayoral-candidate-carlos-cortiglia (accessed August 26, 2014).

9

A case in Belgium litigated in the European Court of Human Rights is illustrative of how materials that do not directly incite hate can still contribute to an environment in which hate crime can proliferate and is not necessarily a protected form of speech. Daniel Féret, of the Front National in Belgium was convicted of incitement to racial hatred and discrimination for a litany of statements which included descriptions of the ‘risk’ of Islam, Islamic ‘conquest’ of Europe, and referred to Muslims as the ‘couscous clan’.14 The court decided that these statements were unprotected speech not because they called citizens to violent action against Muslims but because they initiated a ‘criminogenic milieu [milieu criminogène]’,15 stressing that politicians running for office must refrain from making racist statements because their words can create an environment in which hate speech is rendered acceptable. While Daniel Féret had made a long list of anti-Muslim and xenophobic statements, the brochure featuring BNP candidate Cortiglia utilises similar language at a smaller scale and can be seen as justifying and enabling hate speech. It should be a key concern of the Mayor’s office to see to it that no such material is able to published in municipal documents. It is important that hate crime strategies address literature and media that circulate hate and counter environments in which hate speech is rendered acceptable and valid.

14 Féret c. Belgique, no. 15615/07, § 15, ECHR (2009). 15 Féret c. Belgique, no. 15615/07, § 49, ECHR (2009).

10

Social media sites might be one of the most alarming places where the term ‘criminogenic milieu’ is particularly applicable. Given the open-ended nature of sites such as Facebook and Twitter it is extremely difficult to monitor hate speech. These sites offer platforms for communication and are used quite frequently by far-right extremists.16 The English Defence League was very active on Twitter and today, Britain First is prolific on Facebook. A large amount of anti-Muslim literature is published almost daily on the Britain First site, where members are frequently reminded that Muslims perpetrated the attacks on Drummer Lee Rigby and, because of that, they are all suspect. Given that this is not a party running for election, the decision in Féret v Belgium may not be applicable in censuring this speech. However, it is imperative that cyber-crime officers monitor far-right extremists on social media networks. We have come across a number of disturbing tweets and Facebook comments that are highly abusive. Further, these organisations often use social media to coordinate attacks and demonstrations.17 More importantly, many of these groups might bring up discussion about a mosque or Muslim immigrants and inevitably a few group members on Facebook or Twitter will contribute an disturbing message that refers to ‘burning,’ ‘shooting,’ ‘killing,’ or ‘bombing’ Muslims and Muslim institutions. Far-right terrorists get their information about Islam from the internet, obtaining highly skewed information about Islam and Muslims from a global anti-Muslim network and are motivated to conduct their attacks based on the social media networks

16 J Bartlett and M Littler, Inside the EDL: populist politics in a digital age, (Lonon: Demos, 2011). 17 M Feldman and M Littler, Tell MAMA Reporting 2013/14: Anti-Muslim Overview, Analysis and 'Cumulative Extremism', (Teeside University, 2014).

11

they participate in.18 While it would be impossible to prevent the circulation of such materials, the safety of Muslim Londoners can be improved with increased monitoring of far-right social networks and raising an alarm in case violent comments are made that need following up by law enforcement. The Mayor’s strategy works along these lines but it is crucial that the specific problem of far-right anti-Muslim hate be taken into account in the strategy.

The problems of geopolitics and history present a unique challenge in dealing with anti-Muslim hate crime from a policy perspective. The relationship between Europe and the Islamic world goes back for centuries, but for present purposes, we will address how contemporary geopolitics and events present a challenge for policing anti-Muslim hate. Since 9/11, Muslims have been represented in the media as potentially violent or extreme due to an overwhelming tendency among broadsheets and tabloids to report negative stories about Islam and Muslims.19 Public discourse in news media as well as in television and film ‘frames’ Muslims as objects of suspicion.20 Through the early 2000s, studies reveal that Muslims were broadly represented within a framework of ‘terrorism’ and ‘violent extremism.’ Law enforcement, encouraged to take the threat of ‘radicalisation’ seriously, increased its efforts in policing Muslim communities.21 This tendency became common in the United States as well, where domestic law enforcement was involved in tracking, wiretapping, and even entrapping Muslim-Americans.22 In Britain, the Muslim community has been treated with suspicion, using similar surveillance techniques.23

Today, however, the picture is slightly different. While suspicion of Muslims persists and emerges as the media breaks stories such as those about British Muslims leaving the UK to fight for the Islamic State, anti-Muslim rhetoric is better understood as a kind of ‘cultural racism’.24 Towards the end of the early 2000s, news coverage shifted from equating Muslims with terrorism towards a focus on the alleged ‘cultural incompatability’ of Muslims in the West. This has been figured as a form of ‘cultural nationalism,’ but the concept of ‘cultural racism’ that we deploy is quite similar. The far-right in the UK and Europe has a

desire to ban a certain group of people from entering Europe as immigrants purely on the basis of their religion, and the denial of their place in a European country on this basis is inarguably xenophobic. The idea of restricting freedom of worship by banning mosque construction is clearly authoritarian. Finally, the assumption that Western Muslims are unable to properly follow their faith without becoming a threat to their host societies suggests as essentialist view of Islam and Muslims that, while not focused on ethnicity, can produce bigotry and intolerance identical to that of the far-right in its traditional forms.25

18 Feldman and Littler, 2014. 19 K Moore, et al. "Images of Islam in the UK," Cardiff School of Journalism, Media, and Cultural Studies (2008). 20 P Morey and A Yaqin, Framing Muslims (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011) and J Shaheen, Reel Bad Arabs (Brooklyn: Olive Branch Press, 2001). 21 G et al. Mythen, "'I'm a Muslim, but I'm not a Terrorist': Victimization, Risky Identities, and the Performance of Safety," The British Journal of Criminology 49, no. 6 (2009): 736-754. 22 A Kundnani, The Muslims are Coming (London: Verso, 2014). 23 Kundani, 2014. 24 M Feldman, From Radical-Right Islamophobia to 'Cumulative Extremism:' A paper on the shifting focus of hatred, (London: Faith Matters, 2012). 25 A Meleagrou-Hitchens and H Bruns, A Neo-Nationalist Network: The English Defence League and Europe’s Counter-Jihad Movement, (London: ICSR King's College London, 2013): 38.

12

One disturbing trend that is intimately connected with an anxiety about Muslim culture in Britain is the use of pork in vandalism of Muslim property and places of worship.26 Far-right groups such as the EDL and Britain First have used news coverage—which often exaggerates stories before all the facts emerge—to justify hate. A quick look at Facebook or Twitter activity around specific articles that pose Muslims as culturally different and somehow incompatible with British culture is often met with demands for blanket deportation and on occasion, violence.27

Unlike other forms of hate crime, such as that directed to BME individuals, homophobic or anti-disability hate, the media has a direct relationship in providing justification and fuel for organisation of anti-Muslim hate. Mainstream media (on the left and the right) can inadvertently inflame tensions or trigger hate. The broadcast of the brutal murder of Drummer Lee Rigby across the web, broadcast media, and newspapers with Michael Adebolajo’s bloodied hands became an image that remains a rallying cry for Britain First. In the aftermath of Rigby’s death, an immense spike in anti-Muslim hate emerged.28

This is not to make a case for censorship, but rather to emphasise that any approach to anti-Muslim hate must take into account to broader conditions from which this hate emerges. Such an approach must be common to all efforts to combat hate crime. However, we must remain attentive to the specificity of anti-Muslim crime and its rooting in a form of ‘cultural racism’. If we return to the thoughts of the European Court of Human Rights in Féret v Belgium, there are a variety of factors that lead to an environment in which hate crime is rendered justifiable and acceptable. With regard to anti-Muslim crime, social media as well as news coverage plays a major role in enabling the far-right to justify its vitriol and violence. While news coverage must be regulated by the Royal Charter, and it is outside the jurisdiction of the police to regulate news coverage, the Mayor’s strategy should take into account how the media may consciously or unconsciously contribute to hate crime and be active in encouraging strict accountability for journalists. Further, the police should take an active approach when trigger events emerge, such as the killing of Drummer Lee Rigby, the emigration of British nationals to fight abroad in proscribed organisations, or mosque construction plans announced to ensure that community tensions do not boil over. This can be accomplished with diligent media monitoring and improved liaison with Muslim communities. While in the past it has been suggested that Muslims are overwhelmingly distrustful of the police, recent data has suggested that this is not the case; in fact 76% of Muslims (as opposed to 67% of the public) surveyed expressed a high level of trust in law enforcement institutions.29 As different events trigger responses from the far-right as they are thrust into the public domain and the media, the Police must work with Muslim communities (alongside monitoring the far-right) to understand and allay their concerns. Police forces should be prepared to intervene in cases where a member of a far-right party may be expressing violent, anti-Muslim hate before it turns into a hate crime—a key area for applying intelligence-led policing approaches.

26 M Feldman and M Littler, Tell MAMA Reporting 2013/14: Anti-Muslim Overview, Analysis and 'Cumulative Extremism', (Teeside University, 2014): 27. 27 ibid., 13-15. 28 ibid., 15. 29 Gallup, The Gallup Coexist Index 2009: A Global Study of Interfaith Relations, (Gallup, Inc, 2009): 24.

13

Objective 3: ensuring justice by working with criminal justice partners

British law around hate crimes is sufficiently robust to deal with Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hate when it is prosecuted as a religiously aggravated crime. While racially and religiously aggravated crimes are generally dealt with effectively both by the police and the Crown Prosecution Service in terms of the law, there is a particular gap that prevents the adequate protection of British Muslims. For incitement to racial hatred, speech that constitutes a crime includes words that are threatening, abusive or insulting and either intend to stir up racial hatred or are likely to do so.30 On the other hand, the law is different in regard to incitement to religious hatred:

A religious hatred offence has been created by Parliament, and came into force on 1 October 2007. However, this law is very different from the race hate law already on the statute books in that it only covers threatening words or behaviour (not insults or abuse) and only covers such words or behaviour that is intended to stir up religious hatred (not that which is likely to stir up hatred). So abusive insulting or behaviour intended to stir up religious hatred is not an offence under the legislation, nor are threatening words likely to stir up religious hatred.31

Given the nature of anti-Muslim hate, this gap opens a possibility for cultural racism to congeal and fester. Far-right groups are able to avoid prosecution for much of their vitriol because their hate may not be directly threatening despite its racist character. For example, insulting and abusive claims made about Muslims are not prosecutable, but if they were used against a Black Muslim and referenced her race for example then it could be considered a racist offence. However, much of the disturbing online hate is directed at Muslims as a whole rather than toward specific ethnic groups, and consequently, those who express such views cannot be prosecuted under the law. Anti-Sikh and anti-Semitic hate, because of the ethnically homogeneous character of Sikhs and Jews in the UK, are considered as racial hate crimes and incidents while anti-Christian, anti-Buddhist, and anti-Muslim hate would not be considered as such.32 While this is completely understandable—Buddhism and Islam are the most ethnically diverse religions in Britain—anti-Muslim rhetoric decisively collapses all Muslims into one group, being treated by the far-right as quasi-racial group. Thus, Muslims are ‘racialised’ as a homogeneous, monolithic group and hate operates against them in much the same way as racist hate.33 However, because of the law, it is extremely difficult to police the form of cultural racism that the far-right expresses today. Parliament and CPS should review approaches to prosecuting incitement to religious hatred in the light of understanding the threat ‘cultural racism’ presents to British Muslims. While we do not necessarily advocate for the changing of the law, cases litigated around anti-Muslim hate in the future must take into consideration the particular character of anti-Muslim hate, its operation as a specialised and unique form of racism.

30 CPS, Racist and Religous Crime - CPS Prosecution Policy, (Bolton: Crown Prosecution Service , 2010): 12. 31 ibid., 14. 32 ibid., 9. 33 See K Murji and J Solomos, Racialization: Studies in Theory and Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005): 3.

14

Conclusion

Anti-Muslim hate crime remains a problem particularly as a form of everyday abuse. It is often triggered by public discourse appropriated by the far-right to justify what would, if directed at a specific race, would be an incitement to hatred. Geopolitical events, news coverage, and even entertainment contributes to anxiety, suspicion, and distrust of Muslims despite their commitment and loyalty to the United Kingdom and their contribution to London’s culture and economy. Addressing anti-Muslim hate requires understanding it as a form of cultural racism that collapses all Muslims under a monolithic, homogeneous image. It is the specificity of anti-Muslim hate, tied up with foreign policy, geopolitical conflict abroad, and a recent history of suspicion that demands a particular approach in terms of hate crime reduction. The strategy that the Mayor’s office has presented thus far will make excellent strides in improving the security of Muslim Londoners. We have presented evidence on the specificity of anti-Muslim hate in order to elucidate better how it operates. There are a number of gaps in the strategy which understandably takes a universal approach to addressing hate crime. These gaps can be filled with a better attention to the particularity of anti-Muslim hate. All the same, Tell MAMA commends the Mayor’s office for the development of its strategy thus far. Its objectives of increasing reporting, protecting communities, and engaging the criminal justice system are excellent goals. The Metropolitan Police has begun recording Islamophobic hate crime, offering us crucial visibility on the problem. We hope that by presenting evidence on the unique kinds of insecurity that anti-Muslim hate presents, the Mayor’s office will be able to attend to the specific needs of the Muslim community in London.

WWW.tellmamauk.orgCopyright  ©  2014  Tell  MAMA