Proof of the pudding

DO WE need any more statistics to tell us that in many places Muslims are facing discrimination based on their religion and/or their ethnicity? Some international bodies, including those related to the European Union, have been with clockwork regularity producing report after report about the rising trend of anti-Islam sentiments.

Statistics and nicely-worded recommendations following lengthy studies and analyses that are featured in the reports are duly sent and distributed to the mass media and policy makers for their attention and follow-up actions. Quite often, the jaded response toward those statistics and recommendations is this: "OK, anything new? Or is that a rehash of old statistics? May be even, OK, any studies on how effective these studies are?"

This is not to deny the importance of statistics in policy making but just to show that perhaps when it comes to anti-Islam sentiments, it is now high time for everybody involved to advance the discourse and provide proof rather than mere analyses. Take, for example, the report of the Vienna-based European Union Minorities and Discrimination Survey (EU-MIDIS) last month that one in every three Muslims living in the 14 member states of the European Union face considerable discrimination, and mistrust in authorities means that many of the victims fail to report racist incidents.

The survey also found that 11 per cent of the Muslim respondents said they had also experienced a racially motivated crime. The report found the highest level of prejudice against Muslims occurred in the workplace. The highest levels of discrimination occurred in employment (when looking for work 18 per cent; at work 13 per cent), and in private services (at a bar restaurant, shop, by a landlord; total 14 per cent). In comparison, of all ethnic groups surveyed within EU-MIDIS, 37 per cent experienced discrimination, and 12 per cent had been a victim of a racist crime.

Muslims aged 16-24 years experience more discrimination in comparison with other age groups. An overwhelming majority, 79 per cent, do not report their experiences of racism. This means that thousands of cases of discrimination and racist crime remain invisible, and are therefore not recorded in official complaints and criminal justice data collection mechanisms. People without citizenship and those who have lived in the country for the shortest period of time are less likely to report discrimination.

Regarding the reasons for not reporting incidents, 59 per cent of Muslim respondents believe that nothing would happen or change by reporting, and 38 per cent say that it happens all the time and therefore they do not make the effort to report incidents.

The survey also reveals excessive harassment by the police with one in four Muslims said they were stopped by the police in the previous 12 months, and 40 per cent of these said that this was specifically because of their immigrant or minority status and of those stopped by the police said they were stopped on average three times in a year.

We know the tone of that report is not that much different from similar other reports issued over the past several years, especially after the 9/11 when anti-Islam and anti-Muslim sentiments began to increase in many places. What we therefore need to know is, following studies and recommendations, whether there have been changes. If so, then why do we still get almost identical reports? Or is it now, instead, the time to start collecting facts that even after years of studies and recommendations, Islamophobia is still strong and on the rise?

The EU, for its part, has made repeated assertions of its commitment to human rights and the so-called "integration". But from France (where anti-hijab policy is being cooked) to Denmark (and its blasphemous cartoons of the Prophet, peace be upon him) to the Netherlands (where a politician is calling for an expulsion of Muslims) to Italy (where Islam has been described as a backward civilisation), the Muslims there know that the proof of the human rights pudding is in the eating.