13. What are `hate crimes based on race'? What has been the result of such legislation?

 

Hate crimes (also known as bias-motivated crimes) occur when a perpetrator targets a victim because of his or her perceived membership in a certain social group, usually defined by racial group, religion, sexual orientation, disability, class, ethnicity, nationality, age, gender, gender identity, or political affiliation. "Hate crime" generally refers to criminal acts, which are seen to have been motivated by hatred of one or more of the listed conditions. Incidents may involve physical assault, damage to property, bullying, harassment, verbal abuse or insults, or offensive graffiti or letters.

14. What was the opinion of Trevor Philips in 2004 concerning multiculturalism?

Trevor Phillips is chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality. Phillips has argued for school selection to be amended to prevent segregation in British schools and controversially warned that Britain's current approach to multiculturalism could cause Britain to "sleepwalk towards segregation”.

In a Times interview in April 2004, Phillips called for the government to reject its support for multiculturalism, claiming it was out of date, and legitimised "separateness" between communities and instead should "assert a core of Britishness". Trevor Phillips sparked a debate when he said the term "multiculturalism" should be scrapped. Trevor Phillips said the term "multiculturalism" was of another era as the term suggested "separateness" and was no longer useful in present-day Britain. He also mentions that everyone should be equal under the Law, but try to integrate more with his root-community. In 2006, Livingstone accused Phillips of "pandering to the right" so much that he "would soon join the BNP". Phillips himself replied that his views had been "well documented" and "well supported". Phillips has made speeches stating that "it was right to ask hard questions about multicultural Britain"

Some quotations from his speech:

“There can be no true integration without true equality”; “And yes, newcomers do have to change. The language barrier is a real obstacle to work, friendship and democratic participation.”

15. What occurred on 7^th July 2005? How did this affect British society as a whole? How has it continued to influence relations between Muslims and the rest of Britain?

The 7 July 2005 London bombings, also known as 7/7, were a series of coordinated suicide attacks on London's public transport system during the morning rush hour. The bombings were carried out by four British Muslim men, three of Pakistani and one of Jamaican descent, who were motivated by Britain's involvement in the Iraq War (at least this is one on the theory). This case was much hyped by the media, those Muslims were called “home grown terrorists”. A great gap between Muslims and the rest of Britain emerged and people started to question multiculturalism and perceive it more as a failure.

Some said:

Three years ago, four young suicide bombers caused carnage in London. Their aim was not just to kill and maim. There was also a long-term strategic purpose: to sow suspicion and divide Britain between Muslims and the rest. They are succeeding. In Britain today, there is a deepening distrust between mainstream society and ever more isolated Muslim communities. A culture of contempt and violence is emerging on our streets. It has been discovered that for many in the Muslim community, Britain is becoming a very frightening place. Dispatches meets a range of British Muslims who now live in daily fear, some because their homes are constantly vandalised, others because they or family have suffered devastatingly violent attacks. Since the bombings there has understandably been much press coverage of the attacks and other terrorist incidents. This coverage has had the side-effect of portraying Islam and British Muslims in a relentlessly negative fashion, leading to the demonization of a diverse group of two million people, most of whom have nothing to do with terrorism.

The opinion of BNP and some journalists who are proud to be islamophobists:

"The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order. Not letting them travel. Deportation; further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they're from the Middle East or Pakistan. Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children." Here, Amis is doing much more than insulting Muslims. He is using the foul and barbarous language of fascism. Yet his books continue to sell, and his work continues to be celebrated.

And we found the language of Islamophobic columnists such as Toynbee, Liddle, or novelists such as Amis, duplicated by the British National Party and its growing band of supporters

We should all feel ashamed about the way we treat Muslims, in the media, in our politics, and on our streets. We do not treat Muslims with the tolerance, decency and fairness that we often like to boast is the British way. We urgently need to change our public culture.

They have found it. Since 9/11, and particularly 7/7, the BNP has gone all out to tap a rich vein of anti-Muslim sentiment. The party's leader, Nick Griffin, has described Islam as a "wicked, vicious faith"

William Pfaff states that “these British bombers are a consequence of a misguided and catastrophic pursuit of multiculturalism” (“A monster of our own making”, Observer, 21 August 2005)
Gilles Kepel observes that the bombers “were the children of Britain's own multicultural society” and that the bombings
have “smashed” the implicit social consensus that produced multiculturalism “to smithereens” (“Europe's answer to Londonistan”, openDemocracy, 24 August 2005)

16. In 2005 many Eastern European countries joined the European Union. What was the British Government's policy towards these countries with regard to immigration? What was the result of such a policy and how has this affected Britain?

According to official UK government estimates, approximately 1,500 migrants arrived to live in the UK every day during 2005. The same figures suggest that 185,000 more people immigrated into the UK than emigrated to another country, yielding a net population gain of 500 per day

The overwhelming majority were Polish with an estimated 49,000 Poles coming to live in the UK for at least a year in 2005 - three times the number in 2004.

This “open door” policy spawned many problems. British citizens have problems with finding job. Although previously they were glad that people from eastern courtiers worked in low-paid jobs, now they themselves rey to take occupations like that. There are problems with housing as well.

Now some restriction concerning immigration has been introduced.

The proportion of British born people in work is now the same as in 2001. In effect, the extra 1.34 million jobs created in the past seven years have now virtually all gone to immigrants. A major reason for this is the arrival, since May 2004, of half a million workers from Eastern European members of the EU.

The government relied initially on a Home Office commissioned study which estimated that the net number of migrants from the eight new East European members of the European Union would be between 5,000 and 13,000 a year. Migrationwatch UK described this estimate at the time as "simply not credible".

When 170,000 immigrants arrived in the first twelve months, the government claimed that most were here for only a few months. This also proved to be wrong as the number in employment climbed to half a million by the first quarter of 2008. It is now suggested that East Europeans are starting to leave. However, they are also continuing to arrive, although at the lower rate of about 13,000 a month. The Labour Force Survey demonstrates that the number working in the UK has been stable at about 500,000 in the first three quarters of 2008.

Employment of British born workers and of migrant workers both increased as the economy grew between 1997 and 2004. However, the arrival of East European migrants after 2004 coincided with a sharp fall in the employment of British born workers.

17. How is multiculturalism and its legacy viewed in Britain today? What problems are being faced both within the ethnic communities as well as by the white majority?

The opinion of British MP Diane Abbott:

So multi-racialism is easy to talk about but hard to achieve. Britain is a more open, more multi-racial society than ever before. And one where different races and cultural influences are beginning to be positively acknowledged and given equal respect. We have come some way but there is still further to go. Martin Luther King dreamed of an America where a man's character would be more important than the colour of their skin. I suspect that we will know that Britain has become a genuinely multi-racial society, when the skin colour of a British MP is no more significant than the colour of their eyes.

Positive aspects of multiculturalism:

- Learning how things are done in other cultures. You see how other people do things and you can exchange best practices that improve efficiency and/or competitiveness.
- Music and fashion. Food.
-Languages - in a multicultural society you get more chances to practice it.
-Games. New games become popular for more fun at social gathering.
-Multicultural societies demand a series of services like attorneys, translators, real estate agents, and other ancillary services that can be provided by local small businesses.
-Domestic tourism. Foreigners are usually great domestic tourists, because they are curious about their new country.
-New Cultural Festivals (e.g. Notting Hill Festival)

18. Could Multiculturalism be termed a success? What are its benefits and does it have a future?
Everything in modern Britain - from music and fashion to food and language - has been shaped by different ethnic communities, cultures and social groups:

- The annual events calendar in the UK is packed with cultural, social and religious festivals reflecting multicultural Britain. Black History Month in October and Ramadan in the autumn are just a few of the many examples.

- Ethnic cuisine has become part of the British diet with a wide variety of different dishes and spices readily available in restaurants and supermarkets. Britain's current most popular dish is curry.

- Britain's urban youngsters set the trend worldwide for their style in clothes, language and music - mostly based on a unique combination of ethnic styles.

- Television and radio have moved towards including a minority ethnic dimension in both mainstream and specialist programming. A range of ethnic minority publications are also published in Britain, from daily newspapers to magazines and trade journals.

- Athletes from minority ethnic groups have contributed to Britain's sporting success with many people achieving world class and Olympic status in sports like football, cricket, and boxing.
- Individuals from Britain's many different communities have played an active role in the democratic process. However, the numbers involved in the political and decision-making

What is urgently needed is not a panicky retreat from multiculturalism, but to extend its application by recognising Muslims as a legitimate social partner and include them in the institutional compromises of church and state, religion and politics, that characterise the evolving, moderate secularism of mainstream western Europe, and resist the calls for a more radical, French-style secularism.

Moreover, this is not just a matter of state action, for the burden of multicultural representation has to be borne by the multitudinous institutions of civil society that constitute our public space, our public interactions and our plural, public identities.

Thus, the lesson from the current, post-7 July crisis of how to respond to the appeals and threats from salafi jihadism is that we need to go further with multiculturalism: but it has to be a multiculturalism that is allied to, indeed is the other side of the coin of, a renewed and reinvigorated Britishness.

The London bombs are clearly at the centre of this collective social experience. The British government, its security services, writers, academics and commentators have gone to great lengths to determine what happened and why. The focus of discussion has moved right across the spectrum of sociological, political and theological thought. It has also taken into account many factors that might have played their part: the exclusion and alienation of young British Muslims, the temptation of radicalism, the impact of foreign-policy issues (especially, though not exclusively, Iraq), the violations of Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib and the problems of the British model of multiculturalism.

Electrician Jean Charles de Menezes was shot dead on 22 July, 2005, by police who mistook him for one of four would-be suicide bombers who attacked London's transport system the previous day.

On the third anniversary of the 7/7 London Bombings, political commentator and journalist Peter Oborne investigates whether these attacks and the fear of terrorism has fuelled the rise of violence, intolerance and hatred against British Muslims.

He discovers that for many in the Muslim community, Britain is becoming a very frightening place. Dispatches meets a range of British Muslims who now live in daily fear, some because their homes are constantly vandalised, others because they or family have suffered devastatingly violent attacks.

Since the bombings there has understandably been much press coverage of the attacks and other terrorist incidents. Oborne investigates whether this coverage has had the side-effect of portraying Islam and British Muslims in a relentlessly negative fashion, leading to the demonization of a diverse group of two million people, most of whom have nothing to do with terrorism.

Dispatches commissioned a sophisticated study of press coverage from Cardiff University's School of Journalism. The research examined articles published in the British press over the last eight years and their depiction of Muslims and Islam. The troubling results of the study are revealed in the film.

Three years ago, four young suicide bombers caused carnage in London. Their aim was not just to kill and maim. There was also a long-term strategic purpose: to sow suspicion and divide Britain between Muslims and the rest. They are succeeding.

In Britain today, there is a deepening distrust between mainstream society and ever more isolated Muslim communities. A culture of contempt and violence is emerging on our streets.

Three years ago, four young suicide bombers caused carnage in London. Their aim was not just to kill and maim. There was also a long-term strategic purpose: to sow suspicion and divide Britain between Muslims and the rest. They are succeeding.

In Britain today, there is a deepening distrust between mainstream society and ever more isolated Muslim communities. A culture of contempt and violence is emerging on our streets.

Sarfraz Sarwar is a pillar of the Muslim community in Basildon, Essex. He is constantly abused and attacked, and the prayer centre he used has been burnt to the ground.

Mr Sarwar, who has six children and whose wife is matron of an old people's home, is a patently decent man. His only crime is his religious faith. He and his fellow worshippers now meet in secret to evade detection, and the attacks that would follow.

The first abuse that Mr Sarwar's family suffered was in October 2001 - just after the 9/11 attacks - when pigs' trotters were left outside their door, the walls of their house were covered with graffiti and two front windows were broken.

Since then, the family has suffered many attacks, including a failed fire-bombing. In February, the tyres of Mr Sarwar's new car were slashed; in March his windows were broken again. He has now installed CCTV cameras, replaced his wooden back door with one made of steel and erected higher fences.

An investigation for Channel 4's Dispatches programme discovered many violent episodes and attacks on Muslims, with very few reported; those that do get almost no publicity.

Last week, Martyn Gilleard, a Nazi sympathiser in East Yorkshire, was jailed for 16 years. Police found four nail bombs, bullets, swords, axes and knives in his flat. Gilleard had been preparing for a war against Muslims. In a note at his flat he had written, "I am sick and tired of hearing nationalists talking of killing Muslims, blowing up mosques and fighting back only to see these acts of resistance fail. The time has come to stop the talking and start to act."

The Gilleard case went all but unreported. Had a Muslim been found with an arsenal of weapons and planning violent assaults, it would have been a far bigger story.

There is a reason for this blindness in the media. The systematic demonisation of Muslims has become an important part of the central narrative of the British political and media class; it is so entrenched, so much part of normal discussion, that almost nobody notices. Protests go unheard and unnoticed.

Why? Britain's Muslim immigrants are mainly poor, isolated and alienated from mainstream society. Many are a different colour. As a community, British Muslims are relatively powerless. There are few Muslim MPs, there has never been a Muslim cabinet minister, no mainstream newspaper is owned by a Muslim and, as far as we are aware, only one national newspaper has a regular Muslim columnist on its comment pages, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown of The Independent.

Surveys show Muslims have the highest rate of unemployment, the poorest health, the most disability and fewest educational qualifications of any faith group in the country. This means they are vulnerable, rendering them open to ignorant and hostile commentary from mainstream figures.

Islamophobia - defined in 1997 by the landmark report from the Runnymede Trust as "an outlook or world-view involving an unfounded dread and dislike of Muslims, which results in practices of exclusion and discrimination" - can be encountered in the best circles: among our most famous novelists, among newspaper columnists, and in the Church of England.

Its appeal is wide-ranging. "I am an Islamophobe," the Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee wrote in The Independent nearly 10 years ago. "Islamophobia?" the Sunday Times columnist Rod Liddle asks rhetorically in the title of a recent speech, "Count me in". Imagine Liddle declaring: "Anti-Semitism? Count me in", or Toynbee claiming she was "an anti-Semite and proud of it".

Anti-Semitism is recognised as an evil, noxious creed, and its adherents are barred from mainstream society and respectable organs of opinion. Not so Islamophobia.

Its practitioners say Islamophobia cannot be regarded as the same as anti-Semitism because the former is hatred of an ideology or a religion, not Muslims themselves. This means there is no social, political or cultural protection for Muslims: as far as the British political, media and literary establishment is concerned the normal rules of engagement are suspended.

"There is a definite urge; don't you have it?", the author Martin Amis told Ginny Dougary of The Times: "The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order. Not letting them travel. Deportation; further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they're from the Middle East or Pakistan. Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children." Here, Amis is doing much more than insulting Muslims. He is using the foul and barbarous language of fascism. Yet his books continue to sell, and his work continues to be celebrated.

And we found the language of Islamophobic columnists such as Toynbee, Liddle, or novelists such as Amis, duplicated by the British National Party and its growing band of supporters.

All over Europe, parties of the far right have been dropping their traditional hostility to minorities such as Jews and homosexuals; in Britain, the BNP has come to realise that anti-Semitism and anti-black campaigning won't work if they are serious about electoral success.

To move to mainstream respectability, they need an issue that allows them to exploit people's fears about immigrants and Britain's ethnic minority communities without being branded racist extremists.

They have found it. Since 9/11, and particularly 7/7, the BNP has gone all out to tap a rich vein of anti-Muslim sentiment. The party's leader, Nick Griffin, has described Islam as a "wicked, vicious faith" and has tried to distance himself and the party from its anti-Semitic past. Party members are now rebuked for discussing the Holocaust and told to focus on terrorism, the evils of Islam, and scare stories of Britain becoming an Islamic state.

Griffin's strategy has been inspired by the press. He said: "We bang on about Islam. Why? Because to the ordinary public out there it's the thing they can understand. It's the thing the newspaper editors sell newspapers with."

Last month, we visited Stoke-on-Trent, a BNP heartland with nine BNP councillors, a council second only to Barking and Dagenham in far-right representation. The party has made this progress in large part by mounting a vicious anti-Muslim campaign. Stoke has one of the lowest employment rates in the country since the pottery industry collapsed. The BNP has tried to link this decline to Muslim immigration.

Other campaigns have focused on planning issues over mosques, a flashpoint elsewhere too. The BNP accuses the Labour council of cutting special deals with Muslim groups in exchange for support. Wherever we explored tension between Muslims and the local community we tended to discover the BNP was present, fanning discontent.

Many categories of immigrants and foreigners have been singled out for hatred and opprobrium by mainstream society because they were felt to be threats to British identity. At times, these despised categories have included Catholics, Jews, French and Germans; gays were held to subvert decency and normality until the 1980s, blacks until the 1970s, and Jews for centuries. Now this outcast role has fallen to Muslims. And it is the perception that Muslims receive special treatment that fuels the most resentment. When we investigated clashes at a Muslim dairy in Windsor, we found the perception that police had failed to investigate what seemed to be a racist attack by Asian youths on a local woman played a powerful role in fanning resentments.

But by the same token we believe that Muslims should be given the same protection as other minority groups from insults or ignorant abuse. This protection is not available. Ordinary Muslim families are virtually a silenced minority.

We should all feel ashamed about the way we treat Muslims, in the media, in our politics, and on our streets. We do not treat Muslims with the tolerance, decency and fairness that we often like to boast is the British way. We urgently need to change our public culture.

• process have not always reflected their presence in the community. People from minority ethnic groups are now beginning to play a more active part in representative democracy, with a small but growing number of MPs, members of the House of Lords and local counselors. But minority ethnic people are still under represented in national and local decision-making bodies.

This history of immigration to Britain has produced today's uniquely diverse nation. There is now an estimated minority ethnic population of more than 4 million, 7.1% of the population. The Office for National Statistics projects that the minority ethnic population will almost double by 2020, because of its higher birth rate.

Ethnic diversity has enriched British society, it is now home to communities from every corner of the globe. The different communities have helped build today's vibrant Britain and contributed to its economic, social, democratic and cultural development

Of course some people long monoculture society, most of them mention food as the only thing thst `enriched' them.

There is less overt homophobia, sexism or racism (and much more racial intermarriage) in Britain than 30 years ago and racial discrimination is the most politically sensitive form of unfairness. But 31% of people still admit to being racially prejudiced.

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