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Islamophobia: A British Muslim Perspective: Recognition, Prevention, and Treatment
Abstract
The rise of radicalisation, the demonisation of Muslims by demagogues and segments of the British media and the immigration crisis in Europe are all factors that collude and contribute to heightened levels of Islamophobia in the United Kingdom (UK). Islamophobia has been associated with psychological distress in Muslims. However, reputable organisations such as the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the Muslim Council of Britain have raised concerns that the British government’s controversial countering violent extremism programme Prevent may be a barrier to mental health services for Muslims. This book chapter provides background information about the insidious and pervasive phenomenon of Islamophobia in the UK, how Islamophobia has infiltrated British public mental healthcare and the consequences that this has on both providers and users of mental healthcare services.
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Background:
1 in 4 people experience mental health problems at some point during their lives and Muslims are no exception. Exacerbating the morbidity and mortality associated with mental health problems in Muslims is Islamophobia. Stigma and shame are major barriers to accessing and using mental health services and many Muslims with mental health problems do not receive the treatment they need. The Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS) United Kingdom branch organized a mental health conference to challenge the stigma attached to psychological problems in Muslims and to encourage care seeking in this group.
Design:
We conducted a single arm, pre-post comparison study on Muslims who attended the FOSIS mental health conference in Birmingham Medical School, England. Validated stigma scales measuring knowledge, attitudes and behavior were administered on participants before and immediately after exposure to the programme. Participants were also asked to respond to statements, the items of which were on a 5-point Likert scale, about the role that Islam plays in Muslim mental health, stigma as a barrier for Muslims with mental health problems to accessing and using mental health services and if they felt inspired to challenge stigma.
Results:
50/250 (20%) of participants completed the study. There were statistically significant improvements in the 'Reported and Intended Behavior' score (p=0.0036), the 'Inspired to Take Action' Score (p=0.0202) and the 'Incorporating Islamic Principles into Mental Health Treatment for Muslims is Beneficial' score (p=0.0187).
Discussion:
The findings of our study suggest that a 'bespoke' Muslim mental health conference comprised of talks delivered by experts in Islam and mental health and a Muslim who has first-hand experience of psychological distress might be effective at reducing mental health stigma in the Muslim community. Our results should help to inform the design, development and delivery of future Muslim mental health conferences however more robust research in this area is needed.
Background:
On the 22nd May 2017, suicide bomber Salman Abedi detonated an improvised explosive device (IED) in the Manchester Arena killing 22 people and injuring 116 others. Following the 'massacre in Manchester', the leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, linked UK foreign policy with terrorism on British soil. Controversial and contentious though Corbyn's claims may be, the terrorists themselves have also reported that what motivates them to carry out their abominable atrocities are British military operations in Muslim majority countries. Indeed, on the 22nd May 2013, British serviceman, Lee Rigby, was brutally attacked and killed by Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale near the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich, southeast London. The perpetrators of this heinous act told passers-by at the scene that they wanted to avenge the killing of Muslims by the British Armed Forces.
Methods:
We conducted a cross-sectional, mixed-methods study on Muslim perceptions of British combat troops and UK foreign policy. Participants were selected by purposive sampling. We crafted a survey that explored Muslim perceptions of the British military and the government's foreign policy. Response items were on a Likert-scale and there was white space for free text comments which were subjected to thematic analyses.
Results:
75/75 (100%) of the participants recruited responded. (75/75 (100%) Muslim participants, 43/75 (57.3%) female participants, 32/75 (42.7%) male participants, mean age 20.5 years, (Std. Dev. ±2.5)). 66/75 (88%) of respondents either agreed or strongly agreed that British military operations in Muslim majority countries have negatively influenced perceptions towards combat troops. 42/75 (56%) of respondents either agreed or strongly agreed that contact with a combat troops or veterans would positively influence their perceptions towards them. Themes of free text comments included the role that the media plays in demonising Muslims, the transcendental bond that Muslims around the world have for each other and 'the brainwashing' of British combat troops by the Government.
Discussion:
The fact that many of the participants in our sample agreed or strongly agreed that social contact with service personnel or veterans would positively influence perceptions towards them is encouraging. The results of our survey lend support for future intervention studies investigating whether contact between Muslims residing in the UK and British combat troops would promote unity and community cohesion.
The suspect community thesis has been used to explain how and why Muslims have become a stigmatised minority, subject to increased state surveillance and public discourse that constructs Muslims as a potential terrorist threat. Breen-Smyth (2014) argues that a suspect community is generated through national or state security policies and reproduced and reinforced by societal responses and social practices. This influences how Muslims perceive themselves as a suspect community and influences their support for counter-terrorism efforts. This paper will explore the ‘experiential consequences’ of Muslims being stigmatised and labelled as a suspect community and the perceptions this has generated among Muslims living in Australia. We examine how Muslims have reacted to being defined as a terrorist threat and the coping mechanisms they adopt to defend their religious beliefs given Islam is seen by authorities, the media and the public as justifying violence. This paper will explore these issues by reporting results from focus group data collected from Muslims living in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne (N = 104 participants in total). Results illustrate how being defined as a suspect community influences the appraisals Muslims have of themselves, their faith, their community and Australian authorities. Implications for counter-terrorism policies are also identified.
This article considers Hillyard’s first application of the term “suspect community” to the Irish in Britain in the era of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) and its more recent application to Muslims in the global war on terror. A review of the application of the term “suspect community” and research in the field points to the problems associated with constructing an entire population and to problems of misidentification. Ethnographic and other evidence illustrate the stigmatisation, alienation and violence that results from its deployment. Given these difficulties and Greer’s objections to the use of the term “suspect community”, a redefinition of the concept of “suspect community” is proposed, borrowing from Anderson’s concept of the imagined community. The “suspect community” is not merely the product of legal and security apparatuses, but the product of a larger cultural apparatus or “imaginary”. It is redefined as “a community created in and by the securitised imagination and enacted in a processes of ‘othering’ through a range of security practices of counter-terrorism”. The “suspect community” is not an embodied community, but an imagined one, whose boundaries are permeable and shifting and in the eye of the beholder. Its operations are distinct from Islamophobia or anti-Irish racism, yet racism, Islamophobia and other forms of subordination may well be implicated in the process of “othering” the suspect. The effect of being “suspect” on the performance of identity and citizenship is indicated in the conclusion.
Previous research suggests that microaggressions, or subtle and covert manifestations
of bias, are commonplace in the life experience of people of color, women,
and sexual minorities. However, there is a dearth of research focusing on microaggressions
toward people from religious minority groups. Using a qualitative approach
and directed content analysis with Muslim American participants (N=10),
six themes emerged: 1) Endorsing Religious Stereotypes of Muslims as Terrorists,
2) Pathology of the Muslim Religion, 3) Assumption of Religious Homogeneity, 4)
Exoticization, 5) Islamophobic and Mocking Language, and 6) Alien in Own Land.
Implications for Muslim mental health are discussed.
Carl Jung used the term, 'The Wounded Healer' as an archetype to describe doctors who have suffered from an illness. Reading and writing autobiographical narratives of the 'Wounded Healer' is gaining popularity among doctors with mental illness as an effective form of adjunctive therapy. Moreover, reading autobiographical narratives of psychopathology sufferers can 'augment' service providers' humanity by offering valuable qualitative insights into minds afflicted with a psychiatric disorder. The primary author, a doctor of Middle-Eastern descent practicing in the UK, composed an autobiographical narrative about his personal experiences with oscillations in his mood in an attempt to illustrate the cultural, religious and psychosocial factors that influence disease detection, progression, treatment and outcome. An inordinate amount of misconceptions about mental illness abound. We hope that this manuscript will help to lessen the stigma associated with those who suffer from psychopathology (particularly doctors) and encourage sufferers to engage with the appropriate services.
Although the effects of discrimination and hate crimes among various minority member's mental health is documented, no research to date examines the correlates of perceived discrimination among Muslim Americans. Therefore, this study examined perceived discrimination and its association with subclinical paranoia and anxiety among 152 Muslim Americans. A statistically significant relationship was found between perceived religious discrimination and subclinical paranoia, but perceived discrimination and anxiety were not related. There were also significant differences among ethnic groups and between convert, immigrant, second-generation Muslims in the perception of discrimination. Results suggest that perceived discrimination among Muslim Americans is related to the expression of increased vigilance and suspicion and that group differences affect the perception of discrimination.
Perceived discrimination has been studied with regard to its impact on several types of health effects. This meta-analysis provides a comprehensive account of the relationships between multiple forms of perceived discrimination and both mental and physical health outcomes. In addition, this meta-analysis examines potential mechanisms by which perceiving discrimination may affect health, including through psychological and physiological stress responses and health behaviors. Analysis of 134 samples suggests that when weighting each study's contribution by sample size, perceived discrimination has a significant negative effect on both mental and physical health. Perceived discrimination also produces significantly heightened stress responses and is related to participation in unhealthy and nonparticipation in healthy behaviors. These findings suggest potential pathways linking perceived discrimination to negative health outcomes.
To assess the impact of the bombings in London on 7 July on stress levels and travel intentions in London's population.
A cross sectional telephone survey using random digit dialling was conducted to contact a representative sample of adults. Respondents were asked to participate in an interview enquiring about current levels of stress and travel intentions.
Interviews took place between 18 and 20 July.
1010 participants (10% of the eligible people we contacted) completed the interviews.
Main outcomes were presence of substantial stress, measured by using an identical tool to that used to assess the emotional impact of 11 September 2001 in the US population, and intention to travel less on tubes, trains, and buses, or into central London, once the transport network had returned to normal.
31% of Londoners reported substantial stress and 32% reported an intention to travel less. Among other things, having difficulty contacting friends or family by mobile phone (odds ratio 1.7, 95% confidence interval 1.1 to 2.7), having thought you could have been injured or killed (3.8, 2.4 to 6.2), and being Muslim (4.0, 2.5 to 6.6) were associated with a greater presence of substantial stress, whereas being white (0.3, 0.2 to 0.4) and having previous experience of terrorism (0.6, 0.5 to 0.9) were associated with reduced stress. Only 12 participants (1%) felt that they needed professional help to deal with their emotional response to the attacks.
Although the psychological needs of those intimately caught up in the attacks will require further assessment, we found no evidence of a widespread desire for professional counselling. The attacks have inflicted disproportionately high levels of distress among non-white and Muslim Londoners.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to highlight an urgent need for new and improved approaches to supporting hate crime victims and tackling hate crime perpetration in the light of escalating levels of hate crime and growing concerns over the effectiveness of existing interventions and support structures.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper draws from the authors’ own extensive fieldwork conducted with more than 2,000 victims of hate crime over a series of recent studies. The research was designed to uncover lived experiences of hate crime, to understand the physical and emotional harms suffered by victims and their families, and to identify ways of improving the quality of support offered to victims.
Findings
The findings illustrate that current responses to hate crime are hampered by a range of perceived challenges and barriers to justice which exacerbate the harms associated with hate crimes. This includes low levels of public awareness of relevant policies, laws and support services, a lack of meaningful engagement between professionals and marginalised communities and a failure to provide victim-centred criminal justice interventions.
Practical implications
This paper includes a number of recommendations in relation to how scholars, policy makers and professionals can overcome the failings that have been identified, which includes prioritising engagement with diverse communities, improving awareness of hate crime and generating a more comprehensive evidence base on hate crime perpetration.
Originality/value
These themes discussed within this paper are based upon the views and experiences of an extensive sample of hate crime victims, many of whom have never previously shared their stories with researchers, the police or any other support organisations.
Anti-Muslim hate crime is usually viewed in the prism of physical attacks; however, it also occurs in a cyber context, and
this reality has considerable consequences for victims. In seeking to help improve our understanding of anti-Muslim hate crime,
this article draws on the findings from a project that involved qualitative interviews with Muslim men and women who experienced
both virtual and physical world anti-Muslim hate, and reported their experiences to the British government-funded service
Tell Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks. In doing so, this article sets out the first ever study to examine the nature, determinants
and impacts of both virtual and physical world anti-Muslim hate crime upon Muslim men and women in the United Kingdom. Correspondingly,
we found that victims of both virtual and physical world anti-Muslim hate crime are likely to suffer from emotional stress,
anxiety and fear of cyber threats materializing in the ‘real world’.
After the 9/11 attacks, various United States law enforcement and intelligence agencies increased their monitoring and surveillance of American Muslims. We assessed the prevalence of such experiences with a sample of American Muslims. One-fifth of participants reported personal experiences with government surveillance. Relative to those not monitored, American Muslims who reported being monitored also reported being more anxious-but not more angry-about the prospect of government surveillance. Additionally, those monitored reported being more likely to modify their behaviors, avoiding contexts that might lead to government suspicion and future surveillance. Anxieties over the prospect of surveillance mediated the relationship between being previously monitored and modifying their behaviors. Parallels between these findings and literature on social identity threat and emotion regulation are discussed.
In 2011, al-Qaeda leader, Osama Bin Laden, was killed in Pakistan and the US president, Barack Obama, concluded a decade of global ‘war against terror’. In light of this, it seems only sensible to explore what implications the post-9/11 international developments have had on a local basis in specific national contexts. With this in mind, this article focuses on Denmark and discusses how the critical event of 9/11 motivated a security/integration response, including various pre-emptive measures that have cast the Muslim population as the usual suspects. It will discuss how these changes have affected the everyday lives of ordinary Danish Muslims over the last ten years and changed the relationship between majorities and minorities. Finally, it will also examine how and why recent national and international events have created the potential for another shift in majority–minority relations.
We assessed the prevalence of perceived abuse and discrimination among Arab American adults after September 11, 2001, and associations between abuse or discrimination and psychological distress, level of happiness, and health status.
We gathered data from a face-to-face survey administered in 2003 to a representative, population-based sample of Arab American adults residing in the greater Detroit area.
Overall, 25% of the respondents reported post-September 11 personal or familial abuse, and 15% reported that they personally had a bad experience related to their ethnicity, with higher rates among Muslims than Christians. After adjustment for socioeconomic and demographic factors, perceived post-September 11 abuse was associated with higher levels of psychological distress, lower levels of happiness, and worse health status. Personal bad experiences related to ethnicity were associated with increased psychological distress and reduced happiness. Perceptions of not being respected within US society and greater reported effects of September 11 with respect to personal security and safety were associated with higher levels of psychological distress.
Perceived post-September 11 abuse and discrimination were associated with increased psychological distress, reduced levels of happiness, and worse health status in our sample. Community-based, culturally sensitive partnerships should be established to assess and meet the health needs of Arab Americans.
Report of the MPA Scrutiny on MPS Stop and Search Practice
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cross sectional survey of a representative sample of Londoners
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