Research will help civil society groups convey key messages to policy makers, governments, professionals, charities and the media
A new resource aimed at fighting anti-Muslim hate is to be launched in Scotland.
This comes less than a fortnight after the mass murder of Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand by a far right terrorist which was followed by a surge of Islamophobic incidents here in Britain.
The launch also also follows the publication of research showing that nearly two-thirds of Muslim women in Scotland have witnessed or experienced a hate incident or crime.
The Counter-Islamophobia Kit (CIK) is the result of a collaborative project involving six universities across Europe, led by the University of Leeds. Also involved was the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC).
The kit will be available online and will contain research which will help campaigning and civil society groups convey key messages to policy makers, governments, professionals, charities and the media.
It will help the implementation and enforcement of anti-discrimination law and policies, look at wider cultural narratives, the problems of media representation, as well as other laws, policies and institutional issues, and how these link with Islamophobia.
The kit will be launched in Scotland in Glasgow's Renfield St Stephens Centre on Thursday, 28 March.
It will be presented by Professor Ian Law of Leeds University and Arzu Merali, co-founder and head of research at IHRC, who authored the CIK's reports on Britain.
They will be joined in a panel discussion of the CIK by Omar Afzal, a committee member of the Muslim Council of Scotland and Khadija Mohammed, vice chair of the STUC Black Workers Committee. The meeting is being hosted jointly by Scotland Against Criminalising Communities (SACC) and IHRC.
The main aim of the meeting is to raise awareness of the CIK in Scotland and encourage organisations and individuals working to tackle racism to draw on it as a resource.
Arzu Merali said: "The impact of Islamophobic narratives has been only too painfully felt after the mass murder of Muslim worshippers at prayer in New Zealand. There are many actors in civil society, academic and other settings tackling these narratives, however institutional support for such initiatives is woefully lacking.
“Worse still, governments in European settings appear to be appeasing anti-Muslim discourse in order to benefit from the rise in populism. This project aims to empower those already working on these issues as well as help those in institutional settings make the changes needed if governments are really serious in providing equality, security and safety to all within their borders."
Richard Haley, chair of SACC, said: "Islamophobia isn't just an outpouring of meaningless hate. Like all forms of racism it is a political phenomenon and it carries political force.
It needs to be understood and defeated so that it ceases to shape events unfolding across our world. The CIK draws on experiences gained in eight different European countries and represents a really major contribution to our knowledge base. Scotland is very far from being immune to Islamophobia and I hope that people working to tackle the problem will make use of the CIK in developing their own approaches."
