Most modern democratic societies – as well as nations organised in other social formations – ‘espouse the virtues of social stability alongside notions of equality and human/citizenship rights’ (Ratcliffe, 2004: ix). In practice, however, these two areas – social stability and equality – are often constructed in ways that suggest they are not wholly compatible. At some point what often happens is that the values or practices of some social group becomes viewed as being so different that they threaten social stability: their difference (or sometimes, their supposed difference) becomes perceived as a threat. Currently Muslims constitute the group whose difference is thought to be most threatening (see Poole & Richardson 2006 for a discussion of the reasons for this). Obviously this was not always the case in Britain, or across the rest of the world. In Britain, there have been racist scares about Jews in the early years of the twentieth century, Chinese opium dealers around the 1920s, immigration from the Commonwealth in the 1950s, and most recently, asylum seekers. In each of these cases, the issue of difference was heightened, exaggerated or misrepresented for reactionary political reasons.
This is not to say that there is not religious, ethnic or cultural diversity in the UK; clearly there is. But we need to make a distinction between difference and diversity. ‘Difference’ arises from the assertion of distinctiveness on the part of an in-group or an out-group defining themselves or others. In other words, there is an explicit recognition and definition that ‘we’ are different from ‘them’, either in terms of the characteristics that a particular group has or the characteristics that they lack. ‘The desire to draw, and maintain, such boundaries often leads to conflict. On the other hand, a society may exhibit immense diversity in terms of people’s self-identity and a host of social relevant characteristics, yet be largely harmonious’ (Ratcliffe, 2004: x). In such circumstances, although people recognize the ways that ‘we’ differ from ‘them’, there is no social significance attached to these differences: they just are.
The way that diversity is viewed, therefore, has a crucial influence on social stability and social conflict. Journalism provides us with a window on the way that social, ethnic and religious diversity is viewed. I say that it provides us with a window, because social attitudes and news coverage are a chicken and egg issue: does journalism shape people’s beliefs or reflect them? Regardless, an examination of the ideas and arguments in journalism provides us with a way of examining social ideas, and specifically the key arguments and representations about who ‘we’ are and who ‘they’ are circulating at any one time.
I was recently involved in a research project for the Commission for Racial Equality, which examined the way that ‘Britishness’ and ‘being British’ were reported in national newspapers during the past three British general elections. Our sample was limited to the two weeks prior to each election, but our findings are nevertheless revealing of the position that Muslims are perceived – by both press and politicians – to play in the nation, and the way that this has shifted since 1997. During the 1997 and 2001 general elections there were very few reports that mentioned Muslims – 13 in 1997 and 19 in 2001, and that is for all national newspapers combined. In 2005 this rose to 141 articles – a rise from 1 per day to 10 per day. This rise is entirely a response to the war on terror in general, and the invasion of Iraq in particular, and how these events were thought to be playing out in the national (that is domestic) political sphere. Within the sample, we identified two significant themes that shaped a great deal of coverage: articles about the Muslim voter; and articles about extremism and terrorism. Stories about and references to ‘the Muslim vote’ were concentrated in the broadsheet newspapers; in contrast, stories about and references to ‘Muslim fanatics’ and ‘Islamic extremists’ tended to be concentrated in the tabloid newspapers. The common thread that links the stories in both of these types of papers was the idea of ‘Muslim power’. That is, the perception that Muslims were having a greater influence on the public sphere and in the domestic political arena. For the broadsheets this power was being expressed through the ballot box and was, for the most part, legitimate. For the tabloids, this power was being expressed through the threat that ‘Muslim fanatics’ posed to ‘our lives’ and as such was illegitimate. I’d now like to explore these two themes in more detail.
Throughout the election, newspapers were preoccupied by the possibility that British Muslims were turning away from Labour. The reason for this, newspapers suggested, was the invasion of Iraq. Although the invasion of Iraq had broad electoral consequences, and was possibly the biggest cause of disaffection among left wing Labour Party members for a generation, national newspapers repeatedly presented the invasion as an election issue which divided Muslim and non-Muslim Britons. Occasionally this comparison between Muslim and non-Muslim voters was explicitly made, for instance:
The political fall-out from the Iraq war has done enormous damage to Prime Minister Tony Blair’s trust ratings. But in stark contrast to last year’s elections in the US and Spain, the war itself does not seem to be an issue for most British voters.
The exception is places such as Bethnal Green and Bow in London’s East End. Framed by the skyscrapers of London’s financial district, the deprived inner-city constituency has long been home to the capital’s poorest immigrant communities and it has one of the biggest concentrations of Muslim voters. (Muslim voters turn their backs on Blair because of the war, Financial Times, April 21, 2005)
Here, the newspaper claims that, ‘in stark contrast’ to its importance in recent US and Spanish elections, the invasion of Iraq is only a prominent issue in British constituencies with ‘concentrations of Muslim voters’. Faced with such a realisation, and assuming that it was accurate, the newspaper could have explored this in one of two ways. First, it could have asked: what is it about the majority of non-Muslims in the UK that makes them so uninterested in an illegal invasion, spearheaded by their own country, that has resulted in the deaths of more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians? Or, the paper could have asked: what is it about the majority of Muslims in the UK that makes them so interested in this illegal invasion? In this article, the Financial Times chose the second of these options. While such editorial decisions may have been made with the best of intentions – for instance, to report the views of sections of the population often ignored by mainstream journalism – the choice inevitably distances the Muslim electorate from non-Muslims. It implies that British Muslims’ voting preferences are driven by a set of concerns that are different to those of ‘the rest of us’. Specifically, it implies that Muslims are more preoccupied by the state of Iraq than the state of Britain, and more concerned with the troubles of foreigners than their fellow Britons.
The ‘Muslimness’ of British Muslims was assumed to be so powerful that there was never any question that their affiliation, or perhaps allegiance, to Iraqi Muslims would trump all other policy issues. In fact, evidence existed to contradict both of these presuppositions – evidence that was often cited but passed over in our sample:
[…] There is not much evidence of Asians losing faith with Labour. Shaheda Rashid, 32, says: ‘Most of the community are voting Labour. Labour has always helped ethnic minorities.’
Shamsooddin and Fatema Patel, young parents, agree. ‘Labour do more for the community. We’ve got a SureStart nursery now.’ And Mohammed Bilal, a shop assistant, says: ‘Like Robin Cook said, Tony lied, but you should still vote Labour because they’ve done a lot of good work.’ (Legacy of war could undo Straw in battle for Blackburn’s Muslims, The Times, 28 April 2005)
In keeping with the rest of the British voting public, Blackburn’s Muslims appeared far more inclined to cast their vote in response to a variety of factors, national and international, but in which their immediate quality of life was granted priority. In short, news reports that suggested British Muslims would vote on the basis of a different set of concerns or priorities to non-Muslim Britons were repeatedly undermined by the quoted views of British Muslims themselves.
‘Terrorism’ has been a key and recurring feature of reports about Muslims for longer than most people realise. In a sample of broadsheet reporting of Muslims that I took from 1997–98, terrorism was mentioned in 23% of articles that cited Islam as an influential factor (Richardson, 2004); Elizabeth Poole has shown that since 2001 this has increased substantially in British coverage and across the world (Poole, 2006).
As I said, the majority of reports about Muslim terrorism during the build up to the 2005 general election appeared in the tabloids. In particular, the Daily Star printed some of the most inflammatory reports on this issue. For example, the lead of their front page from 21 April read:
MUSLIM LOONIES HIJACK ELECTION
POWER-hungry Islamic extremists have launched a campaign to wreck the General Election.
A fundamentalist group has already issued death threats to candidates in the May 5 poll.
And an Islamic website has urged followers not to give up until Britain becomes a Muslim state.
The magnitude of the Daily Star’s story was hardly warranted by the reported events. Without wanting to underplay the seriousness of the death threats referred to in the article (around 30 young men, calling themselves the ‘Saviour Sect’, burst into an election meeting and threatened the life of George Galloway), to claim that the very small group of men involved were poised to ‘wreck the election’ is hyperbole. Continued on page 2, the article hiked the rhetoric still further, elevating a single criminal act and the website of a fringe party to a violent campaign for world domination:
MUSLIM MANIACS WANT TO MAKE US AN ISLAMIC STATE
ISLAMIC extremists want Muslims to boycott the General Election …and help turn Britain into an Islamic state.
A group of religious militants has already stormed political rallies and issued death threats to politicians standing for Parliament on May 5.
And global Islamic political party Hizb ut-Tahrir’s British website states that they won’t stop until they get world power. (Daily Star, April 21 2005)
The focus of this article is the threat posed by British ‘Islamic extremists’ rather than by foreign invasion. This is a development from when I did my first research, and fits with a wider pattern in the representation of Muslim extremism since 2001. Elizabeth Poole, for example, has argued that, prior to September 11 2001, British Muslims were not ascribed the label ‘terrorist’ so blatantly. ‘Rather it was Muslims in Britain, exiles, who were categorised as extremists […and] physical threat remained at a distance. There has now been a significant shift in the definition of British Muslims as terrorists.’ (Poole, 2006: 95–96).
The following day (April 22 2005), the newspaper dedicated an editorial and a further two articles to the problem posed by ‘Islamic extremists’. The largest of these reports was centred on the reaction of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) to the violent provocation of the Saviour Sect:
BOOT 'EM OUT: Muslim leaders turn against the extremist thugs
BRITISH Muslim leaders have branded homegrown Islamic extremists as “hooligans who are NOT real Muslims”. The damning verdict was issued by the Muslim Council of Britain yesterday.
[…] Inayat Bunglawala, spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, said: “We condemn these people who we believe are a new party called The Saviour Sect.”
[…] He called on Muslims in Britain to ignore the fanatics who he says are filled with hate of Western culture. They should use their vote and embrace mainstream society.
This article consolidates the idea that British Muslims should now be considered a threat to ‘Our’ security. The Britishness of these men is illustrated in the first line of the report, which contains two referential strategies used to represent them: ‘homegrown Islamic extremists’ is presupposed while the other, the Muslim Council of Britain’s view that these men are ‘hooligans who are NOT real Muslims’, is new (or asserted). Clearly the two strategies offer significantly different ways of describing these men. The MCB ‘spokesman’ does not describe these men as Islamic anything; instead, he refers to ‘hooligans’ and, lower down, people who ‘have a hooligan outlook’, referential strategies that frame these men as thugs or yobs and their crimes as public order offences rather than political/religious extremism. Despite this, the paper persists with using the term ‘Islamic’ and co-opts the MCB into its own framing of the reported event: the danger that certain Muslims, ‘filled with hate of Western culture’, represent to Britain. In using the comments of the MCB in such a prominent way, the article presses a familiar binary system of representing ‘the ethnic other’: as loyal subjects or fifth columnists. The newspaper shuts down the debate, in effect denying that there is any space in between these polar positions. Accordingly, the choice open to British Muslims is to ‘embrace mainstream society’ or prepare to be ‘booted out’.
The paper’s campaign against Muslim Loonies was accompanied by comments from their readers – or at least, the comments that were selected by the newspaper. Over three days starting on 22 April, the paper printed mobile phone texts (which, interestingly, they emphasise instead of letters) on the subject. Some examples are reproduced here, complete with text-spellings:
April 22 2005
FUNDAMENTALISTS WONT STOP UNTIL UK IS AN ISLAMIC STATE. SHOW THEM WHY WERE PROUD TO B BRITSH. R OUR GOVERNMENT SPINELESS? GET SHOT OF THE LOT OF THEM. PHIL FROM WORKINGTON
The time for action has come. We british cant let the muslims win. Or uk will be like iraq! Dave from Barking
April 23 2005
Go live in another country, u live by their rules. Should happen ere 2. Wise up people. Kick out the parasites! Buzz, Banbury
AS A BRITISH ASIAN PLEASE DNT MAKE COUNTRY AN ISLAMIC STATE. I AM A SIKH – SUM PEOPLE CNT TELL DIFF BTWN SIKHS N MUSLIMS. I DNT WNT TRUBLE IN FUTURE. VPEEDOFF
April 25 2005
Easy 2 tell Sikhs + muslims apart. Sikhs got turbans and fought + died alongside us many wars. Muslims just hate us all. MAC
Newspapers frequently use letters’ pages to include but rhetorically distance themselves from racist or controversial comment (Richardson & Franklin, 2003). Although the arguments of letters and texts are authored by (or ascribed to) readers, by choosing to print them, the paper ratifies their content. They are selected by the newspaper and, by virtue of their inclusion, they are presented as ‘reasonable comment’. The vitriol of these texts is so extreme, it is astonishing they were printed. Most would be better placed on the website of the BNP or the NF; some arguably contravened laws against incitement to racial hatred. Throughout, the terms of reference are We British versus Them Muslims, a contrast that at least implicitly suggests that Muslims are presupposed to be foreign. Muslims are represented as a problem that patriots need to solve. For most of these readers, the solution to the problem of Islam involves the removal of Muslims from Britain because they are taking advantage of our tolerant ways. In another text, a reader blames Blair for being too soft.
The reporting of the Daily Star fits with what Blommaert and Verschueren (1998) have called a ‘management paradigm’. Accordingly, these Muslims
do not only symbolise the intra-European enemy. They are the enemy. They seem to have penetrated in our midst, abusing our openness. They seem to form a threat to our society which risks destruction as a result of its own tolerance. (Blommaert & Verschueren, 1998: 21)
The reporting of the Daily Star was preoccupied by, and hence magnified, the idea of a Muslim Threat Within. Their coverage assumed a fundamental split between Them and Us; they are Muslim, they are radical and terrorist; they dislike us; and they are here taking advantage of our trusting openness. Although some of its reports and editorials did acknowledge the fact that the majority of British Muslims abhor criminal violence and the kind of views associated with the individuals and groups the paper so repeatedly criticised, there was zero interest in reporting the views and activities of Britain’s Muslim communities outside of this violent and divisive frame of reference. In particular, the Daily Star repeatedly failed to make a distinction between Islam and Islamist or between violent extremism and Islamist political campaigning – even when quoting the reaction of the Muslim Council of Britain. This failure has significantly ‘negative implications for all Muslims because it implies that the problem resides in the religion and in the people who follow it, rather than in alternative factors’ (Poole, 2002: 9). These implications are spelled out in both the racist reaction of the readers of the Daily Star to the story – a reaction that the newspaper then ratified through publishing such views – and, in a less direct way, in the significant increase in racist harassment, vandalism and other violence that British Muslims have suffered since the election (Fekete, 2005: 15, 21-26)
A key, underlying claim of British newspapers, stated in both the sample that we took for this piece of research and at other times, is that they tolerate difference. However, as Hage (1998: 85) has argued, we do well to remember that ‘when those who are intolerant are asked to be tolerant, their power to be intolerant is not taken away from them. It is, in fact, reasserted by the very fact of the request not to exercise it’. British newspapers, particularly the right-wing tabloids, are only tolerant of Muslims up until a point. After this point – which may be crossed when there are ‘too many of them’, or when ‘those that are here’ are apparently doing things that ‘we’ disapprove of – it is assumed to be ok for tolerant newspapers to be intolerant. Blommaert and Verschueren (1998: 78) call this the ‘threshold of tolerance’, satirically arguing that the tolerant European does not become intolerant ‘until this threshold has been crossed. Just let him or her step back over the same threshold, i.e. just reduce the number of foreigners again, and the good old tolerance will return’ (Ibid.). Of course, the exact point of this threshold is kept utterly vague: ‘How many foreigners may present themselves, or what aspects of belief or behaviour they should display before the ‘threshold’ is crossed, remains an ad hoc decision’ for these self-appointed managers of the national space (Blommaert & Verschueren, 1998: 80). In short, tolerance is always an uneasy social condition, as the ‘toleraters’ can withdraw their toleration when they feel it has been overstepped. Those defined as ‘foreign’ are therefore always on their toes; never quite sure when some group, party or individual will feel that the line has been crossed and once again shout ‘that’s enough’.
John E. Richardson is a lecturer in the Department of Social Sciences, Loughborough University. His most recent book is Muslims and the News Media (co-edited with Elizabeth Poole).
© 2004·06
The ‘war on terror’ has greatly helped Al Qaeda by causing discussion, alienation and radicalisation in multi-ethnic communities in Western Europe
Welcome to this issue
Contents of this issue
Editor’s letter
Academic
Debate
Entertainment
Essays
Journalism
Feedback
Britishness, multiculturalism and globalisation
Consumption, the City and social practice
White flight, black attitude
How the ‘War on Terror’ helps terrorism
Religiosity and the politics of identity
Tolerance with conditions
Shooting the Brazilian
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