Source: Independent.co.uk
A report published today shows that Muslims in Britain suffer Islamophobia and discrimination based on their religion, rather than the color of their skin.
80% of the British Muslims say that they are suffering Islamophobia.
The study, published to launch Islam Awareness Week, urges the British government to do some effort to solve this issue, address the Muslims concerns and engage the Muslim community in society.
Sher Khan, a spokesman for the Muslim Association of Britain, said: "There is a real potential for Muslim people to become increasingly isolated within Britain, which goes completely against the idea of trying to create a more cohesive society. It is not going to be possible to achieve integration unless the concerns of British Muslims are addressed by the Government."
"It has to be a two-way process. British Muslims have got to build bridges and be proactive in terms of integrating with the rest of society," he added.
The report, prepared the Open Society Institute, showed that 80 per cent of Muslims said they had been subjected to various forms of Islamophobia since the Sep. 11 attacks.
Two thirds of British Muslims felt they were treated differently from other groups, and 32 per cent said they suffer discrimination at British airports because as a result of being Muslims.
The number of Asian people stopped and searched under the Terrorism Act between 2001 and 2003, has rose by 302 per cent, compared with 230 per cent for black people and 118 per cent for whites.
The report warned: "The high number of stop-and-searches, and the gap between the number of searches and actual arrests, charges and convictions, is leading to a perception among British Muslims of being unfairly policed, and is fuelling a strong disaffection and sense of being under siege."
According to the report, British Muslims are not only suffering verbal and physical attacks, but they are also among the most economically and socially disadvantaged groups in the country. They have the lowest employment rate of any faith group, at 38 per cent, the report has found.
The unemployment rate for 16- to 24-year-olds runs at 17.5 per cent for Muslims, compared with 7.9 per cent for Christians and 7.4 per cent for Hindus.
UK has about 1.6 million, 3 per cent of its population.
Social and economic disadvantage, together with the suspicion they have come under since the Sep. 11 attacks on the U.S., resulted in the increasing demonisation and isolation of Muslim young men, researchers say.
The report concludes: "While policy is moving in the right direction, progress is still not enough to enable some of the real and rapid changes now required.
"Muslim young men have emerged as the new 'folk devils' of popular and media imagination, being represented as the embodiment of fundamentalism.
"To be a British Muslim is defined solely in terms of negativity, deprivation, disadvantage and alienation."
For the majority of Muslims, the issue of their faith is more important than their ethnicity, according to the report.
Dr. Sara Saigol, a hospital doctor born in Britain and living in Manchester with her husband and their three children, tells her experience with Islamophobia.
One day, while she was walking along a main road in Manchester with her children, three men on a building site began shouting "Paki" at her.
"They were glaring at me, and then started picking up stones and looking as if they were about to throw them at me," she said. "I had a double buggy and my daughter skipping behind me, so I couldn't go very fast. I was very intimidated and completely shocked.
"The majority of British society is nothing like that but I couldn't believe that these men were doing this on a main road, and in a multicultural place like Manchester."
"It is difficult to know ... whether it is racism based on the colour of my skin, or Islamophobia based on the fact I was wearing a hijab, but I think it was based on the way I was dressed. There has been a change in the way Muslims are perceived since 11 September 2001, and the way we are portrayed."
"Our local mosque was vandalised recently and people I know have been abused in the street, " Sara’s husband said.
"The discrimination can be very subtle. If there is a bomb attack, it is always described as Islamic terrorism, but when Amir Khan was boxing for Britain in the Olympics, he was described as being a Bolton lad; nothing was mentioned about him being a Muslim.
"People ask me if it is possible to be British and a Muslim. Of course it is. I find the question ludicrous."