This is a full transcript of the speech to be given by Fiyaz Mughal OBE at the TELL MAMA annual fundraising dinner on countering anti-Muslim prejudice and hate:
"Secretary
of State, Minister of State, Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for
attending our second annual fundraising dinner for the TELL MAMA project. The
core principles of the TELL MAMA project include measuring, mapping and
monitoring anti-Muslim incidents both off-line and on-line. Our work also
involves supporting victims of anti-Muslim hate and ensuring access to justice
by ensuring that police forces have relevant evidence and statements from
victims of anti-Muslim hate crimes. Additionally, partnerships with agencies
like Victim Support, who are strongly represented here, local police forces,
Citizens Advice Bureaux local offices and local civil society groups up and
down the country, have assisted our work. But the greatest asset to our work
has been the British public, a public who inherently dislike hate, intolerance
and injustice. That has been one of the greatest assets to our work and we must
celebrate this important fact that is so left out of discussions on hate crime
work. Take for example, the 58 year old woman who was worried about her Somali
neighbours and the abuse that they were getting. Edith picked up the phone and
called us to inform us that she was worried about her neighbours who happen to
be Muslim and who were being repeatedly abused. Or talk Elizabeth, a young 28
year old who stopped and assisted a young Hijab wearing woman who had been spat
at and who was shaken up by the experience. Or take John, who dropped us an
e-mail to tell us that he was worried about a Far Right web-site that was
promoting vile anti-Muslim hatred and violence. These are very real examples
where you, the British public have made a real difference to the lives and dare
I say, to the perception of victims.
Yet,
for all that is good, there is also a downside. Before, I go into this further,
I also must add that today, in a Europe where the Far Right are making gains in
places like France and where in Germany, Turkish Muslim people have been targeted
and killed, or in Italy where Far Right fascist groups hang around railway
platforms in major exit and entry points into the city, we should be truly
grateful that we live in the United Kingdom. You see, I travel and speak in
Europe on the mapping, measuring and monitoring of anti-Muslim hatred and the
stories that I hear of attacks on Muslims on the European mainland are
shocking. Inverting the remark made against Michael Howard, as an island
nation, there is something, not of
the night about us as citizens, but of something of the day. It seems we are
intrinsically built to reject hatred and to rejecting the narratives of hate.
This is a strength, a resource, an asset and something that can be built on and
this is something we should not forget. In this sense, I think that we are
unique in Britain and this should be celebrated, instead we have some people
who consistently put down our country.
So what have we achieved?
Our
achievements have been many this year, from assisting over 800 people in the
last year through casework, advice and assistance, signposting and working with
police, through to over 120 arrests that we were involved with, directly or
indirectly. We have provided training to police forces in London and beyond on
understanding the language and rhetoric of anti-Muslim hatred and we have been
working with some police and crime commissioners in working through their hate
crime plans. Furthermore, we have held over 80 community information sessions
since we also fully understand that there are no real legal remedies in many
cases and results can be achieved by people helping themselves. This means that
we have directly reached out to about 2,000 people in our front-line community
engagement work.
Community
engagement work has therefore been at the forefront of our work and this is
something that we will be widening in 2014 depending on resources. In
particular, raising the confidence of Muslim women in something that is a key
target for us in 2014, since our data and other external triangulating data
sets show that visible Muslim women are the ones that are targeted at a street
level. For Muslim men, anti-Muslim hatred seems to be more at an institutional
level from the cases that we have come across, though again, informing them of
their rights can significantly create change through self-empowerment. We have
also worked with local taxi associations and in Rotherham for example, we
worked with the local authority, local taxi associations and late night
catering outlets. Many of these individuals and workers have suffered
anti-Muslim and racist abuse from people who have had too much to drink and who
cannot wait in line to get that take away after a heavy night of drinking. In
fact, many taxi drivers and fast food workers simply shrug off the abuse and
hate and carry on knowing that their income or their job may be at stake if
they respond. Many also do not have the time or the inclination to report into
the local police. You see, this is the cycle that many live through and I
commend Rotherham Borough Council under the leadership of Cllr Mahroof Hussain
for producing a Taxi Driver’s Handbook which is a useful guide to drivers. It
provides information on hate crime reporting and reflects on what to do if taxi
drivers come across vulnerable young people. In fact, Rotherham has become one
of the beacon areas where we have seen collective and well-co-ordinated action
from the South Yorkshire Police force and the local authority to stamp out hate
crimes by raising reporting-in levels. TELL MAMA has been one of those key
partners over the last year and the South Yorkshire Police and Crime
Commissioner, Shaun Wright, has led the way on hate crime action with Cllr
Hussain.
At
the on-line level, one of the most difficult and complex pieces of work have
been troll accounts on Twitter, set up to harass and consistently promote
anti-Muslim hate. When TELL MAMA started in March 2012 we came into a ‘free for
all’ in the Twitter sphere where hundreds of Twitter accounts were pouring out
anti-Muslim hatred on a daily basis. After two years of meetings and talks with
Twitter, we have seen a significant change in their position which we commend
and welcome. Twitter have become far more receptive to suspending or shutting
accounts that consistently violate
their rules and we have seen a marked shift in the speed of their action and
the receptiveness of them to organisations like TELL MAMA. This is a
significant change from the initial starting position that they had 2 years ago
when we repeatedly heard that it was the belief of key people in Twitter in San
Francisco, that the internet and social media police itself. This change has
come about not only because of our engagement, but because of co-ordinated
civil society action. Saying this, freedom of speech must be protected and it
is the ‘freedom to hate’ and the consistent misuse of Twitter accounts to
continuously promote hate, which we have challenged through some social media
accounts. So free speech purists – take some heart, this fundamental right is
not being threatened, nor should it be in a pluralistic and open society.
So what do we know over the last 12
months? Well we know
that:
- International or national incidents spike
anti-Muslim hate, whether off-line or on-line and this was evident after the
brutal murder of drummer Lee Rigby. (This will be further highlighted in our
forthcoming 2013 /2014 annual report released in early July which will show the
significant spike and Teesside University have been independently number
crunching and analysing the data. We should also note that this corresponds to
what the Community Security Trust saw when the attack on Gaza took place in
2009 – a significant rise and spike in anti-Semitic attacks in the United
Kingdom and Europe.)
- We know that at a street level, visible Muslim females are the ones targeted and those wearing the Hijab or the Hijab and the Niqab. Worryingly, women who wore the Niqab stated that they had suffered repeated anti-Muslim hate incidents and where minor assaults had also occurred.
- We know that there is a high volume of anti-Muslim hatred on-line and through social media sources. Far Right groups now fixate on Islam and Muslims and have replaced their hatred of anti-Semitism. Yet scratch the surface and the anti-Semitism rears its ugly head from them, so it is not hard to find. We also need to put this into context and mention that there is also a high amount of misogyny through social media platforms like Twitter and women are repeatedly targeted.
- We know that after the murder of Lee Rigby in May 2014, within 8 weeks over 30 mosques in England and Wales were attacked. Visible Muslim institutions became a focal point, yet the police and law enforcement agencies worked tirelessly in patrolling key mosques.
- We know that Pavlo Lapshyn, a Ukrainian self-radicalised neo-Nazi, killed Mohammed Saleem in April 2013 and placed 3 bombs in mosques in Walsall, Tipton and Wolverhampton. Bizarrely, Pavlo’s father claims that one of Pavlo’s grandmothers was a Tatar, a Turkic group who are predominantly Muslim.
- Our
latest Teesside University report will also show two further indicators from
the data over the last year. It will show that about 30% of the cases received
last year involved a perpetrator who was from a Far Right group and this once
again brings into focus how a small group of activists can create a higher
impact than their presence through the use of the Internet. This is worrying.
Additionally,
the Teesside report will show that out of the cases last year, about 1 in 6
people reported to the police and to TELL MAMA. This means that 5 in 6 did not
report the incident to the police and this is worrying. Yet, taken together,
the police data and data from TELL MAMA are still not an accurate
representation as to the actual amount of anti-Muslim hate crime taking place; they
are merely indicators due to high levels of under-reporting.
So what does the future
hold?
The
TELL MAMA project has not been an easy concept to start and to maintain,
especially when other Muslim groups have accused us of being too liberal since
we have advocated for gay rights, against anti-Semitism and when you here,
today reflect our vision. In this room today, we have Shia, Sunni, Ahmaddiya,
Ismaili and Sufi Muslims, straight and gay Muslims, Christians, Jews and those
of no faith. We have members of our armed forces, police officers who happen to
be Muslim and many others. You make up society and this is why 2014 will be a
year where we mainstream work on anti-Muslim prejudice by placing anti-Muslim
hatred work in the same umbrella as other protected strands. This is also why
we have reached out to great campaigners like Peter Tatchell and where our
co-Chair is one of the most respected
and experienced hate crime specialists we have in the country today. We are
honoured to have Richard Benson lead and head up our team and we applaud the
support that the Community Security Trust have given to us. Hats off to our Jewish
brothers and sisters for their inspiration, their strength and their courage.
Thank you Richard, Mike and Dave.
And
for those out there who think that ‘we’ are some shadowy organisation planning
an ‘Islamic takeover’ by stealth, the ‘we’ are 4 people. Yes, 4 people covering the whole country and
who have committed themselves to building the foundations of this work. In the
process we have been libelled, smeared, abused, threatened, spat at,
maliciously trolled and hated by the Far Right and others.
With
limited resources, we have striven to do
the right thing, but this is not about
us. This work is about those victims, it is about Khadija, Zuleha and Shazia and
their experiences listed in the booklet on your tables. It is also about
ensuring that we try and build a better society, one in which no-one has to
suffer because of their identity.
And
there is a further call from us. This work has involved one step forward and 2
steps back. It has been a huge learning curve for us, not made easier by a
small number within Muslim communities adding to the paranoia of Far Right
sympathisers who believe that there is a secret Islamic take-over of this
country. Calls for the ‘flag of Islam’ to fly over buildings, calls for
beheadings, abuse at so called ‘apostates’ and threats around cartoons do not
help anyone and are simply disgraceful and are fuel for the conspiracy
theorists of the Far Right.
We have also learnt that taking on the Far
Right head on does not achieve anything nor does taking on a handful of press
outlets who have remained sceptical and on occasions hostile to our work. To
them, we say, let us turn the page and work together to get this work right since
if we do that, we can challenge real notions of victimhood and anger that can
isolate the person feeling them from their local communities.
Most
of all, if there is anything that the last year as taught us, it is that there
is a great deal of work to be done. The murder of Lee and Mohammed Saleem
should be a wake-up call for us, that there are those who hate enough to murder
on our streets. Their zeal and hate may be strong but collectively our purpose
is greater and stronger. We have good on our side, a desire to protect dignity
and life and a purpose based on equal rights for all. So our message to those
who believe that they are superior, that they have a right to abuse others is
this. You are the tiny minority in
our country, you are part of the problem and not the solution. Collectively and
only through collective action can we challenge these people, whether inspired
by hate for a faith or believers of that faith or through hate for our free and
liberal society. So, my team of 4 will continue on that journey, and we hope
that is a journey we can do together. THANK YOU
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