Ethnic minorities in Britain

Ethnic minorities in BritainEthnic Minorities in BritainIntroduction(Mis)labelling identity signifiers bespeaks beneathlying histories of baron structure(s). Indeed, heretofore a wooing is made establish on political, social, economic, cultural and heathenish grounds, an identity signifier remains central to sustain, if non to let off, existing power structures. Further, superstar(a) specific identity signifier can be employed by contestant parties within a given word universe and even in exchange. As contestants struggle everyplace meaning-making, more over, exchanging (mis)labelled identity signifiers betwixt and within groupings of contestant parties gain particular significance when (mis)labelling practice reaches out for outer strains of contested dissertate, beyond a more usual practice of (mis)labelling contestants. Islamophobia, if any, especially as contested within a U.K. context, is just much(prenominal) an instance of an active (mis)labelling practice in which (Jeudo-Christian) Occident vs. (Islamist) Orient as possible (mis)labelled parties to contest exchange exact same (mis)labelled identity signifier i.e. Islamophobic not only in order to frame parties to contest exclusively for an appropriation of what ultimately defines frames of contest per se.Indeed, much literature is dedicated to question the (mis)appropriateness of Islamophobia as a labeller of phobia generated, presumably, from an increasingly visible heraldic bearing of Islam / Muslims in the U.K. in recent years. 1,2,3 The case for / against Islamophobia, depending on which party holds argument, is, in fact, made blurry given the ambiguity of what constitutes a Muslim identity in the first place. 4 Considering potentially multiple identities of U.K. Muslims 5,6, contestation between and within concerned parties holds a fluid ground more so ground on or as a result of fluidity of what makes up Islamophobia. This paper examines multilayered manipulations of Islamopho bia as contested within a U.K context. The argument, first, discusses literature on airstream dealings and immigration policies, more emphasis being laid on policies pertaining to Commonwealth subjects in Indian Subcontinent. An examination follows of how be given-based (addressing ethnicality, assimilation and multiculturalism issues) as opposed to faith-based (addressing religious practices, rights, and interfaith relations) protections use up much influenced and/or mixed up contestations over Islam, Muslims and, most importantly, Islamophobia, if any, within a U.K. context. Finally, Islamophobia is placed in a wider European context in which contestation over Islamophobia as such is connected to Continental debates on modern nation-states and multiculturalisms.Race, race relations and immigration policiesHistorically, Britain has received waves of immigrants of diverse descent for a multitude of motives. Yet, post-World War II period, particularly during mid-1940s, 1950s an d 1960s, witnessed unprecedented influx into major industrial cities for reconstruction efforts. 7,8 Up until late 1960s, no specific uprightnesss communicate inter-ethnic violence and conflict. Ironically, ex-colonies subjects were pick uped, after all, as second class citizens. 9 Only when families of Asian (primarily Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi) works started to flood English cities and ports in what is referred to as twine immigration (i.e. residents invite close family members and friends and, once settled, relatives and friends invite their own families and friends) did local acts of ethnic violence give prominence to and raise public awareness on a national level of alien citizen status as part of British reality. 10Still, post-World War II period is one characterised more by inflammatory statements made about nationals of non-British blood and descent 11 rather than about citizens whose allegiance to British values and way of life is questionable because of a diffe rent creed such as in case of to the south-Asians. Indicative of an increasingly racialised public discourse pertaining to immigrants and naturalised subjects isWhen individuals like the Marquis of Salisbury spoke of maintaining the English way of life, they were not simply referring to economic or regional folk patterns, but explicitly to the preservation of the racial character of the English throng. We have developing here a process of subjectification grounded in a racialised construction of the British Subject which excludes and includes people on the basis of race/skin colour. 12Indeed, race remains a fundamental subtext of British hegemonic discourse during colonial era, in post-World War II period and beyond. For one, one staple justification for subjection of nations, groups and individuals is race. 13 Further, in case of a South Asian minority, presumably British Subjects, race is invoked as a justification for inequalities at workplace, housing, education, let wholly political rights. 14In essence, race and racism essentialise subjects of racist acts. Similar to all hegemonic practices which maintain specific power relations within an overarching power structure, racism emphasises superior vs. Inferior duality in order not only to maintain existing power relations but also to morally justify excesses of inequalities. 15In British context, South Asian workers predominantly from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh particularly during first mass immigration waves of 1940s, 1950s and 1960s were, like a appurtenance fit into a larger wheel, brought in as props, imported, used, and returned. Initially, South Asians workers performed and acted as underdogs much to masters delight. Later, however, as familiarity of British System and Administration developed amongst workers of non-British blood, riots and protests became flutter (racist) masters needed to work on. Thus, successive legislations regulating immigrants status within U.K. borders were, app arently, meant to control influx of immigrants and to align British Subjects along well-defined ethnic boundaries.16 As U.K.s ethnic makeup diversified over time and across localities, states insistence on ethnic markers between and within ethnic groups grew by leaps and bounds.The racism formula, endorsed by laws and working brilliantly in a colonial era and slightly so within borders during early days of mass immigration, turned out gnarly if not unstabilising given growing pressures of growing minorities in pocket cities, minorities outright capable of tipping vote balance.Ultimately, a multi-ethnic / multicultural society is not based on a hotwill, all-accommodating multiculturalism discourse one meant to acknowledge ethnic / racial / cultural differences per se by way of minority rights but, rather, one emphasizing ethnic markers for further state control. 17 In fact, state control, in so far as British Muslims are concerned, represents a clear instance not only of an ethn icity manipulated (at multiple layers of discourse in government, media, and education) but, further still, of an identity (i.e. BrMislim / BrAsian) manipulated (at just same layers) and hence fluidity of what constitutes Islam / Muslim and, probably in turn, Islamophobia. Understanding an emerging Islamophobia requires, however, an examination of evolution of race relations politics from one based on race to one based on faith.Race, faith, Islamophobia, and multiculturalismBy definition, political discourse is one characterised by manipulation and is, largely, subject to voters sway in democracies. 18 Political Correctness (PC) is just one example of political machination. In essence, a politically correct expression is a euphemism meant (and, for that matter, meaning) less(prenominal) to fulfil felicity conditions required for an actionable statement and more as instrumental. Thus, British policies on race and ethnicity has marked a shift since installation of race relations act s of 1965 and 1968 19 from an emphasis on racial discrimination to an emphasis on religious extremism and fanaticism as a basis for incrimination only selectively, excluding BrMuslims.Indeed, incitement to hatred based on affiliation to Islam is one major legal anomaly scholars deal to point out to. 19, 20 Interestedly, given papers purposes, racial discrimination against BrAsians has not, in fact, been eliminated by virtue of progress in legislation on racial relations but only diverted to an separate (unprotected by law) dimension, significant as is, of a BrAsian subjects identity. That is, being Muslim.That multilayered public discourse has, moreover, shifted from race to faith is indicative not of actionable (as opposed to pronounced) change but of power structure(s) embedded in race relations discourses in the U.K. Thus, in place of a racialised discourse based on BrAsian intrusion into Britishness, same racial group, now British Muslims, comes out as anti-British. Typical of a manipulative political discourse a game of labelling and re-labelling underprivileged, underrepresented groups (except in prisons) is enacted such that power relations as engineered, largely but not always by, state are maintained within and between different ethnicities in a multicultural community which is, Britain. Unsurprisingly, a set of composite metrics has been developed in order to measure Britishness. 21 That such metrics combine gauges of loyalties at intra-national (i.e. Britain), national (i.e. England, Scotland, etc), or local (e.g. Bradford) levels is, indeed, indicative of an ethnic identity crisis, particularly so in case of BrAsians / BrMuslims. As a consequence, a group diverse as BrAsians / BrMuslims and framed as inassimilable 22 into wider and mainstream community is bundled up altogether, labelled and made alien. Islamophobia is, one argues, an expression of an anxiety over ethnicity identity.Indeed, Islamophobic sentiments are, upon close examination, ai med not at Islam per se but at Muslims. 23 In fact, literature repeatedly points out that people, rather than faith, is phobes trajectory. 23, 24,25 A broad overview of British media is indicative of who is meant and labelledIf you doubt whether Islamophobia exists in Britain, I Gordon Conway, Head of Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia suggest you spend a week reading, as I have done, a range of national and local papers. If you look for articles which refer to Muslims or to Islam you will find prejudiced and antagonistic comments, mostly subtle but sometimes blatant and crude. Where the media lead, many will follow. British Muslims suffer discrimination in their education and in the workplace. Acts of harassment and violence against Muslims are leafy vegetable. 26Thus, Islamophobia, a label gaining currency in media and academia thanks to Runnymede Trusts much publicised report Islamophobia, a challenge for us all 27 has acquired such a canonical status as to render alternative neologisms unrepresentative of responses to Islam / Muslims. According to Halliday,Islamophobia indulges conformism and authority within Muslim communities. one and only(a) cannot avoid the sense, in regard to work such as the Runnymede Report that the race relations world has yielded, for reasons of political emphasis added convenience, on this term. 28Moreover,The use of Islamophobia also challenges the possibility of dialogue based on universal principles. It suggeststhat the solution lies in greater dialogue, bridge-building and respect for the other community, but this inevitably runs the risk of denying the right, or possibility, of criticisms of the practices of those with whom one is having the dialogue. Not only those who, on universal human rights grounds, object to elements in Moslem traditions and current rhetoric, but also those who challenge conservative readings from within, can more easily be classed as Islamophobes. 29Thus, Islamophobia is employed in such a politically correct fashion such as to silence criticisms, on one hand, and to maintain good neighbourhood relations, on another. The former stance is framed, in right-leaning perspective, as militant, jihadist, terrorist, uncivil, anti-modern and anti- westwardern. 30 The latter is framed, in Islamist perspective, as accommodating, assimilative and hegemonic. In between is media, an arena for meaning-making and chemise perceptions.Alternatively, Islamophobia can be employed not as a politically correct euphemism in order to silence internal criticisms or to maintain law and order but, rather, to militate against an other. This could take a shape of dismantling politeness courtesies essential not for a politically correct dialogue but for one based on critical questioning. Still, Islamophobia could be further employed such as a cover up for supposedly hidden hegemonic agendas. 31One peculiar shift for Islamophobia as contested within a U.K. context is how instead of importe d aliens made citizens being instigators of hate, violence, unrest, and, ultimately terror an enemy within image is constructed and maintained such as to, apparently, pass Islamophobic sentiments, if any, from one generation onto another. 32 For some now increasingly most, credit to media rivers of actual blood speed London streets following London 7/7 ( la 9/11 codification) attacks are reminiscent of symbolic blood as invoked by Enoch Powell in his Birmingham speech in 1968As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see the River Tiber foaming with much blood. The sad and intractable phenomenon i.e. immigration which we emphasis added watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic, but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect. 33Unsurprisingly, Powells xenophobic pronouncements just as all xenophobic pronouncements -gain further inertia as an apparently self-fulfilling prophecy comes true. Admittedly, most, if not all, far-right politics tap into a well-rehearsed repertoire of phobias not least Islamophobia. Moreover, whole political careers are created and enhanced based on precautions from an other now of colour, now of race, and now of different faith. Across Europe, ballot boxes speak volumes of Islamophobia tapped into as a final recourse against an imminent green menace within. 34,35Islamophobia European contextPlaced in a wider context, Islamophobia is not exclusive to U.K. As a matter of fact, for Europe in which U.K. is situated and to which it is historically affiliated Islamophobia is a common currency. Indeed, each European country has a distinctive narrative to tell of Islam / Muslims. Yet, for all differences, European nations especially former colonial powers share common narratives of home-grown terrorists and phobias. 36 Interestingly still is how European nation states follow a similar pattern of s tate controls over flow of (now particularly Muslim) immigrants as well as controls of modes of conducts of minorities within. 37In fact, U.K.s, and for that matter Europes, current immigration laws and policies cannot be fully understood in isolation of European conception of nation-states.Historically, European nation-states evolved into democratic polities in which upholding order and rule of law required consistent policies. 38 As European countries grew increasingly into political, economic and scientific powerhouses, an increasing influx of immigrants required subtler essence of control. Typically, in major European countries such as U.K. enacting multiculturalism policies meant, at least apparently in so far as actual practices are concerned, less room for rightfully diverse communities and more for accommodation, assimilation, and full integration of an increasing alien presence posing, allegedly, menaces to established European Enlightenment canonical values of reason and secularism. 39 Probably understandably, far-right currents in European politics manipulated political machinery inciting violence and hatred at times creating, only in voters minds, all sorts of phobias.The case for Islamophobia is one, consequently, which can be understood primarily based on power relations established and maintained in a wider power structure of Europe. This is particularly significant if one is to grasp global (i.e. Western) war on Islam, which is not. For all long-established and nourished power structures need a signifier, a marker, which, presumably , contains, defines, and tags an assumed other only to maintain law and order in an endless historical power struggle over hearts and minds.In conclusion, Islamophobia is, ultimately, a (mis)label slapped onto bottled up power relations within a marked power structure. In U.K. context, Islamophobia is used, as has been demonstrated, not to mark a shift in discursive practices towards a truly multicultural commun ity but to maintain embedded power relations in which specific groups are assigned definite space within ethnic markers. Initially, race is used to maintain power structures but upon introduction of race acts and laws, subtler formers of control and manipulation are employed by which focus is shift from race per se to faith not as a creed but as another boundary of control.Within (i.e. in BrMuslims community), Islamophobia is employed by Islamic leaders such as to appropriate an exclusive definition of Muslims and Islam, on one hand, and in order to silence internal power struggle over meaning-making of Islam and, probably, anything else. Finally, in a broader context, Islamophobia is employed as a means of control and manipulation of Muslim communities within, multiculturalism policies aside.Notes1. Nasreen Ali, Virinder S. Karla, and S. Sayyid, eds. A post colonial people South Asians in Britain. London Hurst, 2006.2. Taher Abbas, ed. Muslim Britain Communities under pressure. Lon don Zed, 2005.3. Peter Braham, Ali Rattansi, and Richard Skillington, eds. Racism and antiracism Inequalities, opportunities, and politics. London SAGE, 1999.4. Afifa Hussain and William Miller. Multicultural nationalism Islamophobia, Anglophobia, and devolution. Oxford Oxford University Press, 2006.5. Ibid.6. Stephan May, Tariq Modood, and Judith Squires, eds. Ethnicity, nationalism, and minority rights. Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 2004.7. Peter Braham, Ali Rattansi, and Richard Skillington, Racism and antiracism8. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, ed. Muslims in the West from sojourners to citizens (Oxford Oxford University Press, 2002), 19-369. Ibid.10. Peter Braham, Ali Rattansi, and Richard Skillington, eds. Racism and antiracism11. Ibid.12. Quoted in Peter Braham, Ali Rattansi, and Richard Skillington, eds. Racism and antiracism, 12.13. Ernest Cashmore and Barry Troyna. Introduction to race relations. Basingstoke The Falmer Press, 1990.14. Ibid.15. Robert Miles. Racism after ra ce relations. London Rutledge, 1993.16. Nasreen Ali, Virinder S. Karla, and S. Sayyid, eds. A post colonial people South Asians in Britain17. Ibid.18. Peter Braham, Ali Rattansi, and Richard Skillington.19. Ibid.20. Stephan May, Tariq Modood, and Judith Squires, eds. Ethnicity, nationalism, and minority rights.21. Afifa Hussain and William Miller. Multicultural nationalism Islamophobia, Anglophobia, and devolution.22. Nasreen Ali, Virinder S. Karla, and S. Sayyid, eds. A post colonial people South Asians in Britain, 183.23. John E. Richardson. (Mis)representing Islam the racism and rhetoric of British broadsheet newspapers. Amsterdam John Benjamins, 2004.24. Christopher Allen, The impact of the Runnymede Trust on Islamophobia in the UK, BOCE, no. 6 (2003) 51-69.25. Ali Mohammadi, ed. Islam encountering globalisation. New York RoutledgeCurzon, 2002.26. Quoted in Abdul Gafoor Abdul Majeed Noorani. Islam Jihad prejudice versus reality (Bangladesh The University Press, 2002), 41.27. Ch ristopher Allen, The impact of the Runnymede Trust on Islamophobia in the UK.28. Quoted in Ali Mohammadi, ed. Islam encountering globalization, 24.29. Ibid.30. Robert Spencer. The politically incorrect guide to Islam (and the Crusades). Washington, DC Regnery, 2005.31. Ibid.32. Roger Ballard and Marcus Banks, eds. Desh Pardesh the South Asian presence in Britain. London Hurst, 1994.33. Quoted in Peter Braham, Ali Rattansi, and Richard Skillington, eds. Racism and antiracism, 18.34. Raphael Israeli. The Islamic challenge in Europe. New Jersey dealing Publishers, 2008.35. Roger Ballard and Marcus Banks, eds. Desh Pardesh the South Asian presence in Britain36. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, ed. Muslims in the West from sojourners to citizens. Oxford Oxford University Press, 2002.37. Ibid.38. Nasreen Ali, Virinder S. Karla, and S. Sayyid, eds. A post colonial people South Asians in Britain9. Ali Mohammadi, ed. Islam encountering globalization.BibliographyAbbas, Taher, ed. Muslim Britain Commun ities under pressure. London Zed, 2005.Ali, Nasreen, Karla, Virinder, and Sayyid, S., eds. A post colonial people South Asians in Britain. London Hurst, 2006.Allen, Christopher, The impact of the Runnymede Trust on Islamophobia in the UK, BOCE, no. 6 (2003) 51-69.Ballard, Roger and Banks, Marcus, eds. Desh Pardesh the South Asian presence in Britain. London Hurst, 1994.Braham, Peter, Rattansi, Ali, and Skillington, Richard, eds. Racism and antiracism Inequalities, opportunities, and politics. London SAGE, 1999.Cashmore, Ernest and Troyna, Barry. Introduction to race relations. Basingstoke The Falmer Press, 1990.Haddad, Yvonne, ed. Muslims in the West from sojourners to citizens (Oxford Oxford University Press, 2002), 19-36.Hussain, Afifa and Miller, William. Multicultural nationalism Islamophobia, Anglophobia, and devolution. Oxford Oxford University Press, 2006.Israeli, Raphael. The Islamic challenge in Europe. New Jersey Transaction Publishers, 2008May, Stephan, Modood, Tariq, and Squires, Judith, eds. Ethnicity, nationalism, and minority rights. Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 2004.Mohammadi, Ali, ed. Islam encountering globalisation. New York RoutledgeCurzon, 2002.Noorani, Abdul Gafoor Abdul Majeed. Islam Jihad prejudice versus reality Bangladesh The University Press, 2002.Richardson, John. (Mis)representing Islam the racism and rhetoric of British broadsheet newspapers. Amsterdam John Benjamins, 2004Spencer, Robert. The politically incorrect guide to Islam (and the Crusades). Washington, DC Regnery, 2005