With the likelihood of Boris Johnson as the prime minister of the UK, the country is caught hard in the grip of right-wing populism. The dark days laid out since the EU referendum are increasingly looking like coming to fruition, and particularly for British Muslims.
Anti-Muslim hate is on the rise, spiking particularly in the aftermath of events containing monumental significance or atrocities. In 2017, during a year when terrorist attacks happened in London and Manchester, hate crime towards Muslims grew by 26% according to Tell Mama, the anti-Islamophobia watchdog. These spikes generally took place in the immediate week after such events; for example it climbed by more than 500% in Manchester in the month after the concert bombing. Shockingly, it grew by 93% after the Christchurch shooting in the first week after the attack, showing that hate crime spikes were not always about revenge but sometimes expressions of triumph.
What these figures also underlined was the power of political language. The EU referendum wasn’t explicitly about immigration but some of the language during the referendum revolved around the idea that the English had lost control to other people because of immigration. Was it then unsurprising that racism grew after the referendum, because many on the far-right believed that their views were now the mainstream? This has also generally been true of the hatred facing Muslims where the public narrative around the community has never escaped negativity, as if British Muslims have never positively contributed to the country.
Instead British Muslims continue being depicted as if there is something uniquely wrong about them. Research conducted through a YouGov poll unearthed that 32% of respondents from a survey of over 10,000 people believed that parts of the UK operated under the sharia law. This fits into the broader theme of Muslims ‘attempting to establish a caliphate in the UK’ through expanding the number of mosques and introducing halal food everywhere.
This is a myth popularised considerably by the far-right, including one such group Middle East Forum whose founder, Daniel Pipes, used it to falsely smear French Muslims. An upcoming report written by me for Tell Mama’s parent body, Faith Matters, highlights how they have used tropes of a soft-power Islamist takeover regarding no-go zones, mosques and halal food to create fear around Muslims. As the far-right converge globally on local issues, Middle East Forum have been heavily involved in creating a sense of panic, and that many Tory members believe in no-go zones existing in the UK, underlines the strong reach of this far-right scaremongering whipped up by Middle East Forum. It is a frightening thought, that so many in Britain’s most historic political party, is at the moment swayed by the likes of Daniel Pipes and Steve Bannon where it concerns Muslims.
With such paranoia abound you might expect a political leader to diffuse this. But unfortunately, Boris Johnson himself has inflamed problems when he compared Muslim women in niqabs to “letterboxes” and “bank robbers”. Tell Mama recorded a rise in hate crime in the immediate week after his article in August 2018, with much of it aimed at Muslim women and directly referencing his remark.
Why does this matter? Tell Mama’s annual 2017 report found that Muslim women were targeted six times out of ten in hate incidents, while the perpetrators were overwhelmingly male and young. This underlines a gendered nature to the racism confronting Muslim women, and in many ways embodies the worst of the cultural conservatism that the political right hate in Muslim communities, where Muslim women are treated as gatekeepers of the culture’s honour, forced to uphold it in ways men are not. Likewise, here the far-right target Muslim women often because of their visible identity as Muslims, making them more closely associated with the religion than men.
The unfortunate reality for British Muslims hoping to build dialogue with the Tories over this is that their party is riddled with Islamophobia. A litany of revelations regarding racist anti-Muslim remarks from party activists and councillors have brought into focus the depth of their Islamophobia. Now, a YouGov poll has found that 39% of Tory members believe Islamist terrorism reflects widespread Muslim hostility to Britain and two-thirds believe that parts of Britain operate under no-go zones.
The reach of far-right groups such as Middle East Forum is not something to dismiss, as shown by the YouGov polls regarding the scale of the beliefs in the existence of no-go zones. My research into the Middle East Forum underlined the myriad of far right organisations they have both funded and received funds from, how they backed far right individuals such as Tommy Robinson, whilst spreading myths around American Muslims in the public domain. With an increasing foothold in parts of the UK, it would not be a surprise to see groups like Tell Mama or Muslim politicians targeted with scaremongering about entryism.
The concern would be as to whether Boris Johnson responds sympathetically to British Muslim grievances over this, given the criticisms laid out in his path. The only way for him to begin that would be apologising for his “letterbox” comments and agreeing to confronting the Islamophobia lurking within his own party ranks.