Britain after dehumanization of Muslim community: IHRC

Press TV has conducted an interview with Massoud Shadjareh, from the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), in London, to discuss a recently-released survey on negative impacts of UK government’s policies on British Muslims’ lives.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: How accurate is the result of the survey?

Shadjareh: This survey that we have done is academically proven that to be approximately between 2 to 3 percent accurate of actual what is happening. It is the largest self sample as ever been taken on this issue and it is a qualitative-quantitative survey. So very we could say that this is the best that we have got to look at the reality of what is going on. And indeed, other reports have also strengthened this that Islamophobia is on increase, as increased in way alarming stage, but this report actually puts a figure of how many people are being affected.

And you know things like, for example physical attack is gone from 2010 of 14 percent to 18 percent. When you put that into the perspective of 3 million Muslims, we are talking about half a million Muslim [who] have been victims of physical attack and that is extremely alarming.

And we are arguing that racists and Islamophobes are not born in that way; the society has a tremendous impact and politicians come for a quite sort of criticism and people are saying that as in past you know they were saying the numbers of politicians who were involved in this were 60 percent; …the politicians were who were demonizing [Muslims] and [were] involved in Islamophobic rhetoric. That has increased to %85 percent now.

Press TV: Mr. Shadjareh let me just jump in there. As you just pointed out the survey shows that the British Muslims do believe that it is the government policies that have directly contributed to the rise in Islamophobia and anti-Muslim sentiment. So who does the British Muslim community look to resolve this issue if it is the politicians and the leadership in the country that are the root causes of the problem?

Shadjareh: It really is quite a dilemma and this is why we are sort of pushing this not just on the level of British governmental basis, but also on the EU and even the United Nations (UN).

It really shows that the present government in Britain is part of the problem not the solution. And it is not a misunderstanding; they are deliberately excluding the Muslim community and they are demonizing them day by day. They are passing laws which sort of criminalize the ordinary Muslims, including young children as young as 7 and 5 years old.

And this is the problem and media, unfortunately, are re-strengthening that.  And this is a dilemma which is extremely dangerous, not dangerous just for the fact that this is resulting in mosques being attacked, burnt down, individual Muslims being attacked, hacked to death in the last few years with also the conflict that they create between Muslims and non-Muslims, [with] dehumanization of creation of otherness, and criminalization of a community which are parts and parcels of solution to the problems of the society rather than being the reason for the divisions.

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