Posts promoting anti-Muslim prejudice

Matthew Parris in his column for The Times on Saturday cautioned against the rampant anti- Muslim hostility evident in comments posted to online articles in the mainstream press or reputable blogs.

Following the example of Peter Oborne’s ‘It Shouldn’t Happen to a Muslim’ documentary, Parris substitutes Jew, Jewish and Judaism in the vile comments posted on a Times thread to illustrate the ‘ferocity’ of the bias and the incomparable language reserved for Muslims that would be inconceivable if used against Jews, blacks or gays.

‘Whichever minority you chose you would think such remarks completely unacceptable. They would shock you. Applied to Muslims, though, they did not shock me. They dismayed me but I found the sentiments almost routine’, he wrote.

Islamophobic sentiments being a ‘routine’ feature of our public discourse is precisely the reason Baroness Warsi warned of Islamophobia passing the ‘dinner table test’. But whether one judges from the point of Oborne’s documentary in 2008 or Warsi’s speech of 2011, it would seem the depth and scale of the prejudice has not been tempered. Far from it judging by the sorts of remarks Parris reproduces.

Parris surveys the comments posted by readers of The Times and the Daily Telegraph, the latter previously attempted by Ava Vidal in her review of the anti-Muslim comments posted by ‘young men’ on publication of her article on Muslim women and hate crime. Highlighting the reaction of readers to a post by a Muslim woman who sought to do that which is periodically demanded of British Muslims when atrocities are committed in the name of Islam by a co-religionist, proclaim that the overwhelming majority of Muslims have no truck with the ‘jihadists’, Parris wonders what choices moderates are left with when spurned by readers whose antipathy for all Muslims is undisguised and palpable?

There has been considerable commentary in the papers recently about the anxiety felt by British Jews since the launch of Israel’s latest offensive against Gaza. Columns and opinion pieces articulating fears, real and perceived, of a resurgent anti-Semitism. And yet, more than a year on from the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby; some months on from the ‘Trojan Horse’ saga and days since the beheading of James Foley, the relentless media coverage about Islam and British Muslims of late has not merited anything comparable in terms of the effects of media output and latent hostility on the security and welfare of British Muslims.

And while Parris is correct to point out the ‘routine’ nature of anti-Muslim hostility and the impact of media output on public attitudes, he misses an important point: Islamophobic sentiment and discourse is ‘routine’ because anti-Muslim prejudice is not yet regarded as every bit as social unacceptable as racism, anti-Semitism and homophobia. Until that changes, comments of the sort Parris identifies won’t just be posted but worse, tolerated.