The racialisation of British Muslims
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As Kundani recounts, “the anti-terrorist legislation of the ‘war on terror’” has lead to the institutionalisation of anti-Muslim racism, which has been further normalised by integrationism as a “political culture” (126). In the eighth chapter of his book titled The End of Tolerance, Kundnani argues that anti-Muslim racism transcends religious prejudice and in fact aligns more closely with racial discrimination. He raises an interesting point here which I find ties in with our previous readings by Rana and Arora where they too speak of this racialisation or grouping together of people perceived to be Muslim simply based on external appearance. Kundnani asserts that “religious belonging has come to act as a symbol of racial difference”, emphasising that faith, like race, “is something that someone can observe about you from your appearance” (127). Through this racialisation, underscores that “in blurring the distinction between faith and ethnicity, the already impoverished language for describing racial, ethnic and cultural differences is further deprived of substance” (127). It is clear that we can therefore support the argument that British integrationism supports the institutionalisation of anti-Muslim racism, as opposed to religious prejudice. According to Kudnani’s analysis, contemporary anti-Muslim racism is a form of racialised hostility, rather than religious prejudice, which seeks to isolate and marginalise Muslims based on their assumed sets of ideals which supposedly do not conform to the British ‘core values’.
A phrase that stood out to me in the reading was “the fault-line of this new agenda is the perceived incompatibility between British society and Muslim communities in which supposedly alien values are embedded”, in reference to Gordon Brown’s New Labour and David Cameron’s Conservative Party, both preoccupied by the integrationist agenda (Kundani, 126). It seems characteristic of UK politics to call and urge for a set of ‘core values’ that is supposedly “the glue that must hold Britishness together” in an attempt to integrate all members of British society, while simultaneously blaming cultural diversity for problems to do with “segregation, immigration and terrorism” (Kundani, 122, 125). In other words, as Kundnani critiques, under integrationism, being “British” is increasingly defined by conformity to an idealised set of values which are conveyed as being completely incompatible or at odds with Muslim identities.
It is worth noting that not only did politicians reinforce a false association between cultural diversity, social instability, and extremism, but also media figures especially since 9/11, would regularly “harangue Muslims for supposed failure to share in the values around which Britishness is thought to coalesce: sexual equality, tolerance, freedom of speech and the rule of law” (Kundnani, 126). This aided the normalisation of anti-Muslim sentiments across British society, and although Kundnani argues that covert racism has become less acceptable, such media, along with the integrationist discourse, has rendered far right political narratives, like that of the BNP and Reform UK, more tolerated (135). What has become alarming but definitely not surprising is the rise in popularity of far right political parties in the UK, and Europe more generally, which I believe to be the result of such damaging discourse and false narratives broadcasted by media outlets, disguised as an attempt at integration/assimilation of the ‘other’.