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INTRODUCTION
Background and context
As authors of this book, we have spent our academic careers researching and investigating Islamophobic hate crimes. In our capacity as researchers and experts in this area, we have provided several impactful reports before high-profile parliamentary committees, published academic articles/books, and are passionate about the study of Islamophobic hate crimes. This has also led to independent advisory work with the British Government and working closely with politicians and Ministers on developing our understanding of Islamophobia in Britain and beyond. Following the 9/11 and 7/7 terrorist attacks, and more recently the terrorist attacks in Paris and Tunisia in 2015, and in Woolwich, south-east London, where British Army soldier Drummer Lee Rigby was murdered in 2013, there has been a significant increase in anti-Muslim hate attacks and hostility (Zempi and Awan 2016). Indeed, during Hate Crime Awareness Week in October 2018 (a campaign to help better understand hate crimes in Britain) the UK police force recorded a surge in hate crimes against people because of their religious beliefs. According to the Home Office official data, out of all the offences recorded, 52 per cent of offences were targeting Muslims (Home Office 2017 to 2018). Furthermore, following the appointment of the US President Donald Trump (at the time of writing) and the Brexit vote in Britain, these incidents have led to a sharp increase in Islamophobic hate crimes. There have been reports of mosques being vandalised, Muslim women having their hijab (headscarf) or niqab (face veil) pulled off, Muslim men being attacked, and racist graffiti has been scrawled against Muslim properties.
This book fills a gap in the current research literature on Islamophobia by bringing together a wide range of principles around Islamophobia and hate crimes. The aim of this book is to provide an original textbook on Islamophobic hate crime for students, practitioners, and policy-makers. In doing so, we challenge current thinking around Islamophobia and provide an in-depth academic textbook addressing a topic that, following recent events (discussed earlier) across the world, has become of critical importance. Our starting point for this book is based on our experiences with our students. As academics teaching hate crime and Islamophobia within Higher Education, our students have often expressed difficulties in the lack of choices regarding student academic textbooks on Islamophobia. With this in mind, we have embarked upon our vision to create the first ever student textbook on Islamophobia that helps students and also wider stakeholders, such as community groups, politicians, and the media, to better understand Islamophobia.
This book allows students the opportunity to examine the different processes of victimisation, whether by or of individuals, groups, families, communities, institutions, or the state, and gives them the opportunity to be able to evaluate the impacts of Islamophobia upon individuals and society. Students will also be able to examine the development, role, organisation, and governance of efforts to reduce and prevent Islamophobic crime and harm, and discuss how victims are able to ensure personal and public safety and security in different locations. Students will also be able to analyse and evaluate the effectiveness of such measures and human rights issues in relation to preventive measures in combating Islamophobic hate crimes. It will give readers the opportunity to formulate questions and investigate key areas of Islamophobia. The book will also help students to take account of the complexity and diversity of the ways in which Islamophobic hate crime is constituted, represented, and dealt with by different agencies and be able to make reasoned arguments. Students will also be able to use empirical evidence about Islamophobic hate crime, victimisation surveys, and wider responses towards Islamophobia. Some of the more technical skills students will acquire will include written and oral communication skills, including the clear presentation of research, participating in academic debates and interrogating the evidence. The book will work alongside the other criminology, policing, law, history, religious studies, education, and security studies modules where issues of victimisation within the criminal justice system are examined. This book builds on current research and disseminates new messages arising from Islamophobia, thus contributing towards our understanding of Islamophobia and responding to this form of hate crime. A book of this nature is long overdue and we hope students will be able to benefit from this textbook which they can use when studying about hate crimes.
Key themes and concepts
This book allows students the opportunity to develop a key understanding of criminological and sociological concepts and theoretical approaches, which have been developed in relation to Islamophobic hate crime. It gives students and others an opportunity to examine and conceptualise some of the key debates around Islamophobic hate crime, policy, human rights, and victimisation. The book identifies problems around the processes of Islamophobia and victimisation, the causes and organisation of Islamophobic hate crime, and the processes of preventing and managing crime and victimisation in relation to Islamophobia. The main themes and objectives of this book are focusing on Islamophobic hate crime. Empirical evidence shows that Muslims, particularly those with a ‘visible’ Muslim identity – including wearing a veil for women and a beard for men – are more vulnerable to verbal and physical attacks in public (see, for example, Craig 2002; Githens-Mazer and Lambert 2010; Poynting and Mason 2007; Zempi and Chakraborti 2014). This book examines a wide range of core principles around Islamophobic hate crime and discusses – through a student-led approach – the impact of this victimisation upon victims, their families, and wider communities. It provides empirical research, which examines the nature, scope, and impact of Islamophobia upon Muslims and the wider society. The book also highlights the multidimensional nature of Islamophobic hate crime, and recognises the fact that there is a relationship between anti-Muslim attacks, especially in the globalised world. As such, this book seeks to shed new light on a hitherto under-researched topic and to develop a more nuanced understanding of Islamophobic hate crime. The central themes of the book include a focus on our understanding of hate crime, globalised Islamophobic hate incidents, and also the impact on victims and wider society:
- Conceptualising the nature of Islamophobia
- Autoethnography research methods
- Barriers and victimisation
- Gendered forms of Islamophobia
- Online Islamophobic hate speech
- Marginalised communities
- Contemporary responses to Islamophobic crime
- Institutional forms of Islamophobia
- Islamophobic hate crimes and the media
- Policing and Islamophobia
- Islamophobia in the climate of Brexit and Donald Trump
How to use this textbook?
This textbook is an introduction to some of the key themes and debates surrounding Islamophobia today. It should be used alongside other key texts and should be more than a companion guide. It is not an exhaustive list of all issues to do with Islamophobia but picks out some of the core contemporary debates and uses an academic and student positioning to debate and get students to think more critically about these issues. The book will present students with insights towards a better understanding of criminology, sociology, and hate crime studies. It has also been designed to act as the main reference point for students undertaking summative and formative assessments. The book is split into 11 chapters.
Chapter 1 provides an introduction and discussion about how students should use this textbook. It examines some of the critical debates within Islamophobia and uses contemporary examples, from cases such as the Punish a Muslim Day letter sent to British Muslims. The chapter also provides students with some theoretical examples in relation to the roots of Islamophobia and how perpetrators use societal justifications to target those they perceive as being different. Chapter 2 examines the nature, scope, and impact of hate crime. It argues that hate crimes have a disproportionate impact on the victim on the basis that individuals are being targeted because of their identity. However, hate crimes not only impact the individual victim but also the wider community to which the victim belongs. In this regard, hate crimes send a ‘message’ to the victim and the victim’s group members that they are neither safe nor welcome in the community. The chapter also discusses manifestations of Islamophobic hate crime. Furthermore, it examines the role of ‘trigger’ events with regards to the prevalence and severity of Islamophobic hate crimes. Finally, it outlines the impact of Islamophobia, racism, and discrimination in the workplace on young Muslims’ career development and progression.
Chapter 3 examines the role of the digital space in relation to Islamophobia online. Using empirical research data, the chapter draws upon how certain ‘trigger’ events can lead to an escalation of online hostility. We specifically cite the example of the Woolwich terrorist attack and the social media reaction towards Muslims. This chapter also argues that online incidents cannot be isolated from offline attacks. Both online and offline incidents are a continuity of anti-Muslim hate and thus should not be examined in isolation. Drawing on evidence, the chapter demonstrates that the prevalence and severity of online Islamophobic hate crimes are influenced by ‘trigger’ events of local, national, and international significance. The visibility of people’s Muslim identity is also key to triggering online Islamophobic hate crime.
Furthermore, Chapter 4 examines historical and contemporary discourses of the Muslim veil, and outlines the implications of this rhetoric for veiled Muslim women in the West. The chapter argues that through the colonial lens, the Muslim veil was seen as a symbol of gender oppression. From this perspective, the ‘liberation’ of veiled Muslim women became fused with the motivations of imperial expansion. In a post-9/11 climate, the wearing of the veil is routinely seen as a symbol of Islamist extremism and segregation as well as a sign of gender oppression. The chapter also examines contemporary legal restrictions upon the wearing of the niqab (face veil) in public places in the West, and suggests that banning the niqab potentially legitimises public acts of violence towards veiled Muslim women. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the gendered dimensions of Islamophobia.
Drawing on empirical research, Chapter 5 examines the experiences of non-Muslim men who suffer Islamophobic hate crime because they look Muslim. As will be discussed in detail, participants described being verbally and physically attacked, threatened, and harassed as well as their property being damaged. ‘Trigger’ events included the Brexit vote, Donald Trump’s presidency, as well as ISIS-inspired terrorist attacks in European countries such as France, Germany, Sweden, and the UK. The impacts upon victims included physical, emotional, psychological, and economic damage. These experiences were also damaging to community cohesion and led to polarisation between different communities in the UK. Chapter 6 uses two real-life case studies in order to examine the advantages and limitations of using autoethnography when investigating Islamophobic hate crime. The chapter discusses our personal journey into becoming ‘visibly’ identifiable as Muslims and documents our experiences in relation to this autoethnography study. Autoethnography is a research method used by social scientists when immersing themselves in the footsteps of those they research about. We employ our diary extracts to describe in detail the impact of Islamophobic victimisation upon us and the coping strategies we used.
Chapter 7 explores an emerging theme in relation to policing, profiling, and institutional forms of Islamophobia. Unarguably, Islamophobia entails more than physical violence and verbal abuse. Rather, it has become part of a discussion in relation to racial inequality and structural abuse. Using contemporary examples of policing by force and discriminatory practices at airports, this chapter makes the case that Islamophobia has moved into institutional places. From a policing perspective, we argue that Muslims are under official suspicion and therefore treated as a ‘suspect’ community. Using the earlier examples, the chapter draws upon how these themes impact communities and are part of the new Islamophobia narrative.
Chapter 8 discusses Islamophobia in the media. It provides students with example scenarios, and uses an interactive discussion in relation to media stories about Muslims. The chapter also draws upon empirical research in relation to the media depiction of the murder of Mohammed Saleem and the Woolwich attacks. A further analysis of newspaper coverage is produced which reveals themes of how the media depict Muslims in a negative manner. Similar to other forms of hate crime, the impact of Islamophobia is felt at a variety of levels: by the direct victim, the wider community to which the victim belongs, and society as a whole. As such, Chapter 9 discusses the implications of Islamophobic hate crime on three broad levels: individual, community, and societal impacts.
Chapter 10 examines the nature and extent of Islamophobia in Europe. It argues that Muslims living in Europe face victimisation and discrimination in a broad range of settings and particularly when looking for work, at work, and when trying to access public or private services (FRA 2017). However, all the available data and statistics about Islamophobic hate crime in Europe show only the tip of the iceberg. The vast majority of European states do not record hate crime or anti-Muslim/Islamophobic incidents as a separate category of hate crime. Chapter 11 concludes by raising awareness and issues of Islamophobia from a global context and in particular discusses the role of Donald Trump and the rise of the right. This ...
