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Anti-Muslim hatred remains so pervasive not just in the UK but in many non-Muslim-majority countries.
Conservative Party members have, over recent years, uttered a large number of anti-Muslim comments. The party’s leadership is at fault, not least Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Back in 2018, before he became PM, Johnson described, in a newspaper article, Muslim women who wear the burqa as looking like “letterboxes” and “bank robbers.” Imagine if this had been stated about disparaging comments about black people or Jews. The outcry would be huge.
Prominent Tory Muslims like Baroness Warsi, the former party chairman, believe that a fully independent investigation is required — not one appointed by the party. This is what happened when the Labour Party stood accused of institutional anti-Semitism. Islamophobia in the Conservative Party should be treated just as seriously.Once again, Islamophobia does not get the attention it deserves or the acknowledgement of how widespread this issue has become.
Anti-Muslim hatred is not confined to the streets, but is also found in newspapers, the broadcast media and, perhaps most notably of all, online. For all the myriad examples of Islamophobia and anti-Arab attitudes one can pick out in the Western media and in political discourse, what really highlights the scale of the challenge are the policies of various Western governments toward the Arab and Islamic worlds and the overall reaction to events in the Middle East.
American and European racist attitudes are most clearly on show in terms of immigration. Rather than welcoming Syrian refugees fleeing an extraordinarily brutal regime and the uber-extremists of Daesh, many EU states put up barriers. Denmark is even trying to send Syrians back to their country, declaring it to be safe. Donald Trump in 2015 called for a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the US and he attempted to make this a reality when he became president. The Republican Party has yet to properly distance itself from this policy, Arab News reported.
