The survey, which was carried out in conjunction with YouGov, found that 23.2% of people who come from the social group ABC1 harbor prejudiced views about Islamic beliefs compared with only 18.4% of people questioned from the C2DE group.[1] However, when asked their views about Muslims, or most other ethnic or religious minority groups, older people, men, working class people and Conservative and Leave voters are consistently more likely to hold prejudiced views.

The survey, presented in a report titled ‘The Dinner Table Prejudice: Islamophobia in Contemporary Britain’, interviewed a sample of 1667 people between 20th and 21st July 2021 which was weighted by age, gender, social grade, voting record, region and level of education to ensure representativeness. Weighting was based on the census, Labor Force Survey, Office for National Statistics estimates, and other large-scale data sources.

Other key notable findings in the survey are:

1. Muslims are the UK’s second ‘least liked’ group, after Gypsy and Irish Travelers

2. More than one in four people, and nearly half of Conservative and Leave voters, hold conspiratorial views about Sharia ‘no-go areas’

3. Support for prohibiting all Muslim migration to the UK is 4-6% higher for Muslims than it is for other ethnic and religious groups

4. The British public is almost three times more likely to hold prejudiced views of Islam than they are of other religions

5. British people are more confident in making judgements about Islam than other non-Christian religions but are much more likely to make incorrect assumptions about it

Prejudice towards Islam and Muslims stands out in the UK, not only because it is much more widespread than most forms of racism, but also because prejudice toward Islam is more common among those who are wealthier and well-educated.

The survey also has made specific recommendations to scale back the rise of Islamophobia:

• Government and other public figures should publicly acknowledge and address the lack of public criticism that Islamophobic discourses and practices trigger, and how Islamophobia stands out compared with other forms of racism and prejudice.

• Civil society organizations and equality bodies concerned with prejudice and discrimination should acknowledge that systemic miseducation about Islam is common in British society and forms an important element of Islamophobia.

• Educators should provide clear guidance clarifying when tropes about the Islamic tradition move from acceptable criticism to become harmful.

• Civil society organizations should introduce religious literacy as a component part of any large-scale equality and diversity campaign or policy initiative.

• The BBC and other broadcasters should maintain their commitments to religion programming, but with renewed emphasis on combatting intolerance.

Commenting on the recommendations Dr Stephen H. Jones says: “No-one is calling for laws regulating criticism of religion, but we have to recognize that the British public has been systematically miseducated about Islamic tradition and take steps to remedy this.”

Read the full report HERE.

Source: University of Birmingham

The Art of Resistance in Islam: The Performance of Politics Among Shi’i Women in the Middle East and Beyond

By Yafa Shanneik

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Publication Date: January 20, 2022

Based on first-hand ethnographic insights into Shi’i religious groups in the Middle East and Europe, this book examines women’s resistance to state as well as communal and gender power structures. It offers a new transnational approach to understanding gender agency within contemporary Islamic movements expressed through language, ritual practices, dramatic performances, posters and banners. By looking at the aesthetic performance of the political on the female body through Shi’i ritual practices – an aspect that has previously been ignored in studies on women’s acts of resistance -, Yafa Shanneik shows how women play a central role in redefining sectarian and gender power relations both in the Middle East and in the European diaspora.

About the Author

Yafa Shanneik is Lecturer in Islamic Studies at the Department of Theology and Religion, University of Birmingham. Her research focuses on agency and authority of women in Shi’i and Sunni Muslim communities in the Middle East and their transnational links to Europe. She was awarded three British Academy grants to examine understandings of gender relations and women’s resistance to patriarchal gender norms among Syrian and Iraqi refugees in both the Middle East and Europe.

Source: Cambridge.org

The study, by researchers at the University of Birmingham, found that roughly one in four Britons hold negative views of Muslims and Islam — the highest of any group apart from gypsies and Irish travelers. Over a quarter of people — 25.9 percent — feel negatively toward Muslims, and just under 10 percent feel “very negative.” Significantly more Britons hold negative views of Islam in the survey of 1,667 people than they do of other religions.

That translates into much higher support for a hypothetical policy that bars all Muslim migration to Britain. Nearly one in five people — 18.1 percent — support banning all Muslim migration to the UK, and 9.5 percent “strongly support” that idea.

The study found that Britons are very willing to pass judgment on Islam, but are extremely unlikely to have any real knowledge of the religion. “British people acknowledge their ignorance of most non-Christian religions, with a majority stating they are ‘not sure’ how Jewish (50.8 percent) and Sikh (62.7 percent) scriptures are taught,” said the study. “In the case of Islam, however, people feel more confident making a judgment, with only 40.7 percent being unsure. This is despite the fact that people are much more likely to make the incorrect assumption that Islam is ‘totally’ literalistic.”

This finding — that Britons know less about Islam but are more willing to pass judgment on the faith — “says something about how prejudice works,” Dr. Stephen Jones, author of the study and a researcher focusing on British Muslims, told Arab News. “We tend to associate prejudice with ignorance, but that’s too simple. Instead, prejudice is a kind of miseducation: Many people in this country think they know what Islam is about, and what Muslims believe, in a way that they admit they don’t for other non-Christian religions.”

Islamophobia is so widespread in Britain, Jones said, that it has become socially acceptable. That is why the report dubs it “the dinner table prejudice” — because people will openly and freely admit to their anti-Muslim prejudice, in a way that they are unlikely to with other religious or ethnic groups.

Source: Arab News

Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations

Edited by University of Birmingham, UK, and WRWC program, University of Notre Dame, USA

4 Issues per year

Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group

Print ISSN: 0959-6410

Online ISSN: 1469-9311

Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations promotes the scholarly study of Islam as a religious and intellectual tradition, and its relations with Christianity and other religions. Islam as a religious and intellectual tradition includes:

• Islam as a historical tradition of faith and a current lived reality throughout the world;
• the development of religious teachings and debates about orthodox beliefs;
• major Muslim movements and thinkers;
• religious teachings and principles as motivation for individuals and societies;
• Islamic beliefs in new social contexts past and present; and,
• the future of Islam.

Islam in its relations with Christianity and other religions includes:

• Muslim attitudes towards other religions;
• Christian and other religious attitudes towards Islam;
• mutual influences between Islam and other religions;
• historical and contemporary interfaith collaborations and rivalries;
• religious factors in encounters and confrontations; and,
• Muslim minorities in non-Muslim societies and non-Muslims in Muslim-majority societies.

Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations is edited by the Department of Theology and Religion, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom, and the World Religions and World Church (WRWC) program, University of Notre Dame, USA.

Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations is abstracted and indexed in:

– American Theological Library Association
– Applied Social Science Index and Abstracts (ASSIA)
– ATLA Religion Database
– British Humanities Index
– European Reference Index for the Humanities (ERIH)
– IBR (International Bibliography of Book Reviews)
– IBZ (International Bibliography of Periodical Literature)
– SCOPUS
– Sociological Abstracts
– Theological and Religious Abstracts
-Thomson Reuters Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI)

Source: tandfonline.com

The program addresses the need among faith communities to upskill and train future senior faith leaders and equip them with the relevant professional and managerial skills, whilst appreciating their own religious needs and concerns.

Launching for December 2020 entry, the MPA is a two-year, part-time, distance-learning program designed for senior and emerging senior leaders from across a variety of faiths, from faith-based organizations and from governmental and non-governmental organizations that deal with faith-based issues as part of their everyday life.

For a limited time, the program is also available to those who wish to take advantage of the degree apprenticeship levy, which would cover most of their tuition fees.

Source: University of Birmingham

The display launches a year of cultural collaboration between the UK and the UAE, with the replica of the Koran fragments being presented to the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

Media captionHow the BBC broke the news of the discovery of the ancient Koran Prince Charles said the manuscript’s discovery had “captured the world’s imagination”. “At a time when so much of mankind’s cultural heritage is being deliberately destroyed or threatened, we can only be heartened by the discovery of a previously unrecognized treasure,” he wrote. The so-called Islamic State group has deliberately smashed historical artefacts and cultural sites in Iraq and Syria.

The original Koran fragment, at least 1,370 years old, remains in the University of Birmingham. The university had held the manuscript since the 1920s, but when it was radio-carbon dated last year it was found to be much older than anyone had expected. The range of dates, established by tests carried out by the University of Oxford, showed that the manuscript was among the earliest surviving fragments of the Koran and could be the oldest in existence.

The parchment, with verses of the Koran written on either sheep or goatskin, was put on public display in Birmingham. But for the first time, a digital replica of the manuscript has been taken out of the UK and is being put on show at events in the United Arab Emirates. It will also mark the symbolic return, at least in replica form, of a manuscript that was made in the Middle East in the earliest years of the Muslim faith. An investigation into the likely origin of the Birmingham manuscript showed that it was related to a similar document held in Paris, which had been brought to Europe by a vice-consul of Napoleon.

The Birmingham manuscript had been acquired in the 1920s by Alphonse Mingana, an Assyrian, from what is now modern-day Iraq, whose collecting trips to the Middle East were funded by the Cadbury family. The university’s vice-chancellor, Sir David Eastwood, said the Birmingham Koran manuscript was of “huge significance to Muslim heritage and the academic study of Islam”.

Continue reading at: BBC