Joomla! accessible Template

Fear of Islam: Britain’s New Disease

Last Updated on Tuesday, 30 November 1999 00:00

‘Fear of Islam: Britain’s New Disease’. So ran the headline in the Independent in July, above an article by the columnist Peter Oborne in which he outlined the ways in which Islamophobic sentiment had achieved a level of respectability in Britain that no other form of prejudice enjoyed. Oborne argued that, while overt racism and anti-semitism were unacceptable in modern society: the ‘systematic demonisation of Muslims has become an important part of the central narrative of the British political and media class; it is so entrenched, so much part of normal discussion, that almost nobody notices’. Citing proud declarations of personal antipathy to Islam by journalists such as Polly Toynbee and Rod Liddle, and Martin Amis’ assertion that ‘The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order,’ Oborne cited examples of law-abiding Muslims living in daily fear of abuse and attack.

Oborne’s argument, which formed the basis for a Channel 4 Dispatches programme the following week, was accompanied by a Democratic Audit pamphlet, co-written with James Jones, entitled Muslims Under Siege. It remains to be seen what, if any, impact Oborne’s critique has on the way Muslims are ‘framed’ in politics and the popular press – Melanie Phillips, in the following day’s Daily Mail, predictably repudiated Oborne’s argument by trotting out a familiar litany about Muslim youth out of control, a lack of integration and the failure of multiculturalism. However, Oborne’s piece fires a useful opening volley in the battle for the media to be more self-aware and not always seek the sensational and often insupportable when reporting Muslims in Britain.