{"id":6290,"date":"2013-12-30T10:43:34","date_gmt":"2013-12-30T10:43:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tat.reddaisytrading.co.uk\/index.php\/2013\/12\/30\/twitter-has-become-the-space-for-online-anti-muslim-abuse\/"},"modified":"2013-12-30T10:43:34","modified_gmt":"2013-12-30T10:43:34","slug":"twitter-has-become-the-space-for-online-anti-muslim-abuse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/2013\/12\/30\/twitter-has-become-the-space-for-online-anti-muslim-abuse\/","title":{"rendered":"Twitter has become the space for online anti-Muslim abuse"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Islamophobia remains a major concern in British society <\/h3>\n
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According to a leading lecturer, Islamophobia remains a major concern in British society with a number of reported incidents of street-level violence perpetrated against Muslim communities.\u00a0 Imran Awan, Deputy Director for the Centre for Applied Criminology at Birmingham City University said that in an increasingly more digital environment, social media sites like Facebook and now Twitter have become the new virtual spaces for exacerbating online anti-Muslim abuse and #Islamophobia. He said, <\/span>\u201cI would categorise these incidents as \u2018cyber harassment\u2019, \u2018cyber bullying\u2019, \u2018cyber abuse\u2019, \u2018cyber incitement\u2019, \u2018cyber threats\u2019 and \u2018cyber hate\u2019. They are however not all confined, to social networking sites and wide online sites dedicated to blogging, online chat rooms and other virtual platforms that promote online Islamophobia are equally dangerous.<\/div>\n

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Few of us will forget the moment when Salma Yaqoob appeared on BBC Question Time, and tweeted the following comments to her followers: \u201cApart from this threat to cut my throat by #EDL supporter (!) overwhelmed by warm response to what I said on #bbcqt.\u2019\u2019 The person arrested, in connection with the comments, Steve Littlejohn added: \u201cif that salma yaqueb\u2019s there, cut her f### throat, rip weyman bennets teeth out with pliers and carve edl across all the asian scum who try and attack us\u201d.\u201d<\/div>\n

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He went on to say, \u201cSadly, many of us also recognise this level of online abuse via platforms such as Twitter.\u00a0 I personally have now become accustomed to seeing online trolling and anti-Muslim abuse all targeting me because of my work on anti-Muslim prejudice and the problems of cyber hate against Muslim communities.\u00a0 Simply by using some common words used to abuse Muslim communities with you can find a whole plethora of online anti-Muslim abuse with the #Muslimpigs, #Muzzrats (used by Tommy Robinson), #Muslimpaedophiles and #Muslimcunts.<\/div>\n

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The overwhelming does show that words, visual images, tweets, Facebook comments and online videos of hate not only cause offence but can have a huge impact on the victims they target. \u00a0\u00a0It allows online behaviour to become normalized by offenders which allows a perpetrator to use in many cases anonymity, manipulation and social control to target their victims. \u00a0Mehdi Hasan, the Huffington Post, UK political director recalls the impact of these online hate comments on his family. He states that: \u201cTo say that I find the relentlessly hostile coverage of Islam, coupled with the personal abuse that I receive online, depressing is an understatement. There have been times \u2013 for instance, when I found my wife curled up on our couch, in tears, after having discovered some of the more monstrous and threatening comments on my New Statesman blog \u2013 when I\u2019ve wondered whether it\u2019s all worth it.\u201d<\/div>\n

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Equally ordinary Muslims have also experienced this online hate which has had an impact upon them and their families as shown by the research which I have conducted with Muslim families. The \u2018hate\u2019 comments made online can have a negative impact on the victims who are targeted and can be very upsetting and unsettling for them. \u00a0\u00a0Post Woolwich the Internet and social networking sites have been used to by groups like the far right to attack Muslim communities. This type of prejudice follows a \u2018drip drip\u2019 effect and whilst it has intensified following Woolwich, the level of online anti-Muslim prejudice remains on a steady increase.\u201d<\/div>\n

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He hightlighted the case of many high-profiled individuals by saying that many of the comments posted online through social networking sites, like Twitter or Facebook consist of an \u2018extremist\u2019 and incendiary undertone which attacks the whole of ethos of the government\u2019s social cohesion strategy and risks stoking up more hatred in particular in the case of online Islamophobia.\u00a0 \u201cIndeed, as Tell MAMA recently noted that they had received (74%) of reported online anti-Muslim abuse. \u00a0Some of the cases reported to Tell MAMA included online anti-Muslim abuse against high-profile Muslim figures such as Baroness Warsi and Jemima Khan both of whom were subjected to online threats which were reported to the police by Tell MAMA.<\/div>\n

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Unfortunately, however policing online anti-Muslim abuse remains poor and more needs to be done in providing a safe environment where people are open to reporting online abuse to the police without fear that they will not be taken seriously.\u00a0 The importance of online Islamophobia does not always get the media and political attention it merits. It is often disregarded as \u2018less valuable data\u2019 or people are more concerned with the visible threats Muslims face. This is the problem when trying to ascertain what constitutes \u2018high\u2019 level and \u2018low\u2019 level incidents. For example, the use of targeted \u2018Trolling\u2019 can constitute online harassment and has a huge impact on the victims. \u00a0\u00a0Sadly, as a society the way we deal with online anti-Muslim hate is with a laissez-faire attitude at best and at worst leads to us simply asking the victim either to Block someone via Twitter or to simply close your account. This is why we need to try and build a new culture towards understanding the victim first and foremost.\u201d<\/div>\n

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Islamophobia remains a major concern in British society According to a leading lecturer, Islamophobia remains a major concern in British society with a number of reported incidents of street-level violence perpetrated against Muslim communities.\u00a0 Imran Awan, Deputy Director for the Centre for Applied Criminology at Birmingham City University said that in an increasingly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6290\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}