Islamophobia is seen by many as the last acceptable form of racism and has been described as having “passed the dinner-table test.” It manifests, functions, and reproduces as a form of racism, with Muslim communities being frequently seen and treated as a racialised group. Islamophobia takes many forms from the more overt anti-Muslim hatred in the form of physical and verbal attacks to the less visible discrimination, marginalisation and exclusion of Muslims or those perceived to be Muslims.

As with all forms of racism, we all need to work together to tackle Islamophobia and with this aim, a working group within EREN has been setup made up of talented individuals from across our diverse University community with a fantastic variety of skills and expertise to work towards addressing this racism on campus. To this end we have outlined some key objectives as group. These are:

1. To ensure the University wide adoption and practical commitment to the APPG Definition of Islamophobia.

2. To participate and engage with the development of the new University-wide ‘Report and Support’ mechanisms for reporting racism to explicitly include Islamophobia incidents.

3. To ensure tackling Islamophobia actions are embedded in all racism related University action plans.

4. To remain involved and up to date with other racism data collection within the University to ensure Islamophobia is included and considered.

We are still in our early days as a working group and welcome new members from across the University community who share an interest and concern in addressing Islamophobia. We meet every two months and, restrictions permitting, hope to be able to get together in person for an Eid social over the summer.

(CC0 Image from Pixabay)

Islamaphobia Working Group Bulletin August 2021 / Edinburgh Race Equality Network by blogadmin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0