Commenting on today’s announcement by MHCLG that following a competitive bid process, the British Muslim Trust – a collaboration between Aziz Foundation and Randeree Charitable Trust – has been awarded grant funding to monitor Islamophobic hate crimes and incidents in England, Dr Naomi Green, Assistant Secretary-General of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), said:
“Muslims across the UK are seeing Islamophobia and racism becoming more common in politics and on social media – and it’s starting to feel like the new normal.
The shocking post-Southport riots across 27 towns and cities last summer, fueled by Islamophobic disinformation online, also highlighted that this continued demonisation and othering is not only a threat to the physical safety of the British Muslim community. It is a threat to national security.
Reliable incident reporting and monitoring is an important piece of the puzzle to combating Islamophobia. But for too long, there has been significant mistrust and doubts from many in the Muslim community at the grassroots level towards Government-appointed interlocutors in this space.
It’s encouraging that the current Government is taking steps to address this, however, there are many years of mistrust that need to be untangled. We urge that:
- A cooperative and community-centric approach is taken to ensure that the Islamophobic hate crime and incident reporting functions that the newly formed British Muslim Trust will perform, is integrated with and complements the wider ecosystem of Muslim community organisations and anti-racism groups across civil society already working to combat Islamophobia.
- A transparent, authentic and independent approach is taken to engagement with the Muslim community grassroots. For example, a key test will be how the British Muslim Trust ensures its structures, personnel and the work it performs are open to accountability and scrutiny.
- Police Forces and Home Office data monitoring teams engage the British Muslim Trust to streamline anonymous incident data sharing, in the same manner they do for organisations performing similar third party reporting functions like CST (Community Security Trust) and Galop.
- The scope of incident reporting supported by this central Government funding extends beyond only England, to cover all four nations of the UK.”
[ENDS]
Notes to Editors:
1.The Muslim Council of Britain is the UK’s largest Muslim umbrella body with over 500 affiliated national, regional and local organisations, mosques, charitable associations and professional networks. www.mcb.org.uk
2. For media enquiries please contact media@mcb.org.uk or Tel: 0845 26 26 786