Good afternoon and welcome to the Women and Equalities Committee. Today we have a one-off session examining issues around gendered Islamophobia. The session aims to understand the specific challenges facing Muslim women in the UK today. We will be looking at the barriers facing women who report Islamophobia and how gendered Islamophobia impacts women and girls in the areas of sport, education, employment and everything else. Thank you so much to the panel for joining us. We have Baroness Shaista Gohir, CEO of the Muslim Women’s Network in the UK; Dr Irene Zempi, associate professor in criminology from Nottingham Trent University; Raheel Mohammed, the director of Maslaha, and Allia Fredericks, co-ordinator from Muslim Girls Fence. Welcome to you all and thank you so much for joining this inquiry. I am going to start with Baroness Gohir. Statistics show that Muslim women are more likely to be victims of Islamophobia, abuse and violence than men: is that the experience of your organisation, and if so, what do you think are the main drivers behind it?

Yes, it is our organisation’s experience. The problem is that the statistics are not fully there because most women do not report. In September I published a report, “Anti-Muslim Hate, Concerns and Experiences” which showed that 80% of Muslim women do not report. I will leave you a copy of that report. We then started to look at the police data using the FOI, and the highest numbers were reported by the Met police, Greater Manchester and West Midlands, but that is probably where the largest Muslim populations are. We then drilled down to look at gender. For example, more men than women reported in Greater Manchester, which shows that women are maybe under-reporting. For the West Midlands it was a little different, more or less 50:50 but with slightly more women reporting. I do not know whether West Midlands police are better at giving women the confidence to report. Where do I start with what the drivers are? They are political. There has been a lot of negative political rhetoric, particularly from some politicians in the last Government. Online social media spaces, public commentators, and the media as well are pushing a very anti-Muslim rhetoric, which is sometimes disguised as free speech. Muslim women are very visible, particularly if they wear the headscarf or face veil, or they may not wear a headscarf but still wear traditional dress, and so they are more easily targeted. Perhaps there is an association that they are oppressed, they are not going to fight back, they are with children, so they are an easy target. The concern is that this is not just on the street, but also in public spaces, or through a drive-by. Not a lot of people talk about getting abused through a drive-by. I would like this to be defined as gender-based violence, which it has not been, because if you look at the stats again, the vast majority of the perpetrators tend to be white males. More women have started to be perpetrators as well, but it is important to recognise this as violence against women and girls. I am not going to read all the stats here, but one in five Muslim women we surveyed said that they had experienced hate crime, including incidents that might be listed as non-hate crimes because they did not meet the threshold. One in five said they had experienced it in the last 12 months, and a quarter said that they had experienced it multiple times as well. That feeds into the fact—I am sure you might ask about this later—that people do not live in a vacuum; if they are hearing rhetoric online it feeds into their experience when they are accessing a service, it feeds into the workplace as well, and the impacts are huge.

I just want to come back on two areas that you touched on. The first is how police are recording this. Where you have information from, for instance, the West Midlands police and Metropolitan police, how are they classifying Islamophobic hate crimes, or anti-Muslim hatred and abuse? Secondly, is there a need for a definition so that organisations, services and the public sector can better quantify this data and any of the other data they capture? I will have a follow-on from that.

I will deal with those two and then I might need a reminder about the follow-on. When somebody is subjected to a hate crime incident, whether it meets the criminal threshold or not, the first thing is that it needs to be reported. The problem is that if it is not reported, you do not know how bad the current environment is. So there is an educational piece that needs to be done. When they do report it, they might describe what has happened and assume that the police officer is recording it under faith hate crime, motivated by someone’s religion. The way the police officer interprets the law—we can talk about this—is that they might record it under race instead. If you look at the police stats, you will see that every year for each police force, there are several thousand race-motivated hate crimes. There are normally only a few hundred faith motivated hate crimes, and sometimes just in double digits. You do not know where the police officer is putting that report. We need to educate women that, if they believe a hate crime is motivated by faith, they can say to the police officer, “Can you record it in this way?” It is their right to ask for this, even if the police officer disagrees, but there is a lack of awareness, there is a lack of education, which means that women do not ask, they just assume and they might not know. What was the follow-up question?

It was about a standardised definition.

It would help if we had a legal definition because at the moment we have four pieces of legislation and, depending on what police force it is, depending on the context, depending on the police officer, it might be interpreted differently. Since what the crime might involve is not legally defined, they might classify it as a non-criminal offence, that it does not meet the threshold that the person may feel it does. That can obviously apply in the workplace as well. Therefore, you have this ambiguity, you have inconsistent justice across different police forces and across different victims. I know there may be some difficulty in legally defining it but, considering the amount of difficult legislation that goes through this House, I am sure we could define something that meets everybody’s needs and concerns and actually protects Muslims from anti-Muslim hate. There is one other point that is important in terms of law, and I declare my interest as a board member of the Law Commission. Before my time, it published a report saying that we need to bring the four pieces of legislation together, as has been done in Scotland, making it really simple and really easy for police officers to use. On top of that you have the legal definition and the fact that race hate crime and religiously motivated hate crime are treated differently. At the moment, if you see online material which is promoting hate but is not threatening action, that is a still a race hate crime. The bar for faith-based hate crime is lower. So you could have material online which is motivating hate, but if it is not threatening, you can leave it on there. Why does the same not apply for race and faith? It should be the same because the end goal is that you are actually harming people; it is resulting in hostility and violence. That is why, by the way, there was lots of material that was left online after the racially and religiously aggravated riots that took place in the summer. It was not taken down because it does not meet that threatening threshold even though it is inciting hatred. The Law Commission is saying you need to change that, so that is where the law could be amended.

In relation to the stats you shared around reporting, I just wanted to know if, from your research, you found a correlation between the representation of the local police force and the rates of women coming forward to report? Is there a link that we could use?

As I mentioned earlier, Greater Manchester, West Midlands and London have the highest rates. That does not mean that there is more happening, it is just that they have bigger Muslim populations. But it is interesting to see more women are reporting in West Midlands compared to Manchester; are they getting their awareness raising right? Another interesting stat I found, and this is just looking at the Met police data, is about the ethnicity of the women that were reporting. Interestingly, more black women compared to black men were reporting, but when it came to Asians, more Asian men compared to Asian women were reporting. I do not know why there is a disparity. Are black women more aware, or are they targeted more? Why are fewer Asian women reporting? Somebody needs to really dig into the data, but we do not have the capacity to do that.

What are the most common forms of gendered Islamophobia experienced by women and girls? Are you seeing an increase in online Islamophobia? I have met with British Muslim TikTokers, women who were subjected to awful Islamophobic abuse. A lot of them are in the beauty industry or in modest wear fashion, all those types of social media influence, and they felt the onus was on them to police their own social media output and what people were posting on there. Even if a woman has the right to say, “I have been abused or victimised because of my religion”, it seems very much like the onus is still on the woman to know it is her right to do that, instead of the police offering to help and saying, “You have been abused for X, Y and Z.”

When it comes to online abuse there is a big gap. Even when it is offline, women are not reporting. When it is online, they are even less likely to report, they just use the tools, and a lot of times they get a message back saying, “It does not meet our threshold.” So you find women either going offline or staying online but not exercising their rights to participate in speech online. It is also when you are walking down the road, for example, and you are name-called, called a terrorist, your hijab is pulled or, “What’s underneath that hijab?” Food and drink is thrown at you, or you are spat at. It is really frightening if you are with a vulnerable adult, a disabled person or a child. Women are changing their behaviours and not going to the park. After the riots, women were doing online shopping and saying, “We are not using public transport.” Some started to wear hats instead of headscarves, some would go on a train without the headscarf and then put it back on after, or avoid certain areas. Your human rights and your freedom of movement are being restricted if you cannot go down the road or you are scared into online shopping or you are changing your appearance. Some women said, “Well, we did not remove the headscarf, but we wore brighter and more flowery headscarves, or instead of wearing the jilbab, the long dress, we are wearing trousers with a long top”, that type of thing; changing their appearance but also their behaviour because of the physical abuse. Our charity rarely gets any kind of negative emails—surprisingly enough because we are easy to find—but in the last few weeks we have had four saying, “Muslims should get out of the country, you are all rapists,” and other awful stuff. That is the problem. It is fine to highlight criminality, but all Muslims are being stereotyped, which is anti-Muslim prejudice.

On behalf of the Committee, I am so sorry that you and your team have experienced that. It is just horrendous and completely unacceptable. Alex, I know you have some questions for Irene so would you like to come in here?

Yes. What I want to emphasise is that Islamophobia is intersectional. It is definitely gendered, but we also have added layers of identity in addition to religion, especially being visibly Muslim and female. There is that perception that because you are a Muslim woman, you are passive, you are an easy, weak target and therefore you are more easily abused and offenders think they can get away with it. In addition to religion and gender, other added layers such as disability, age, race, sexual orientation and transgender identity come into play. These aspects of identity are not independent; they create unique experiences of oppression, marginalisation, discrimination and hate crime for victims who are seen as vulnerable in the eyes of the perpetrator. The experiences of a black Muslim woman are different to those of a white revert Muslim woman, for example. We cannot homogenise people’s experiences. In order to do justice and offer appropriate support but also tackle offending, we need to unpack these aspects of perceived difference and vulnerability. However, these experiences are so normalised that they become part and parcel of women’s experience, and they think, “What is the point of reporting that?” They sometimes do not even know that it is a form of hate crime. There are additional obstacles too, whether that is an insecure immigration status, accessibility issues or language barriers. Although in the eyes of the police these could be single isolated incidents, in women’s experience there is a continuity, whether it is online, offline, on public transport or while using social media platforms. It is common to the point that it becomes part and parcel of being a Muslim at this point in time. So yes, to answer your question, it is gendered, but it is also intersectional and that intersectionality is not understood in terms of the police recording methods. It is not captured, both in terms of the different aspects of identity but also that continuity that I mentioned. The police need single, isolated incidents, so we miss that continuity of structural racism, historical oppression, marginalisation, misogyny, disablism and so forth, depending upon the different aspects of identity that come into play.

Absolutely. New migrant communities, communities that are not established in this country yet, or communities with illegal, insecure immigration status, might feel less confident to share these experiences, even with their own community, let alone with the authorities. In that respect, they might think, “I deserve to be treated like that.” As I mentioned before, they might not realise that this is a form of hate crime and they think it is how they should be treated, that they are being targeted because of their identity or identities, and that might affect their confidence to engage. It might lead to self-censoring in terms of appearance and engagement, and it could lead to isolation and marginalisation.

We know that only 25% of hate crime is reported, and then you have the additional barriers, as I said before, of communities that do not have that confidence or knowledge, such as new migrant communities, or communities with insecure immigration status. We do not know the extent or the nature of the problem; we only get the tip of the iceberg through statistics. Academic knowledge and research and work that is being done through organisations like MEND and Tell MAMA tries to fill that gap, but it is about reaching out to those communities that are isolated and whose voices are not heard because of structural barriers or because they do not feel confident or have the awareness that this is a form of hate crime that they need to report, and letting them know that support is available for them. So, the picture is unclear. The answer is that we do not know, and that means people are suffering in silence. That has implications for the perpetrators who are getting away with it.

Thank you, Irene and thank you, Alex. Before we move on, I just want to point people to my register of interests. Kirith, we will come to you next.

We have touched on this already, but from your perspectives, to what extent is the visibility of Muslim women a factor in their targeting?

I will refer to Allia as well. In terms of our work, Islamophobia—as we are hearing right now—happens on an interpersonal level, such as somebody having their hijab grabbed on the street. A lot of our work also focuses on the structural Islamophobia that, as Irene has been saying, is really invisible. In our work in schools for instance, and Allia can perhaps speak more to Muslim Girls Fence, we constantly hear of young Muslim girls censoring themselves because they do not feel safe in schools, whether they wear the hijab or not. We know there was a report by the Social Mobility Commission in 2017 that showed a deficit in terms of education, in higher education, but even if you do well in education you suffer in the labour market, and that is because of Islamophobia and racism. So, those are two separate things. Structural Islamophobia is something that will not be covered by hate crime but for us, it is about understanding that racisms are not static. Right now we are dealing with a number of different currents; we have had the racist riots over the summer and we have an ongoing, what many people are calling genocide, in Gaza that is affecting the communities that we work with. There are longer historical currents as well; the war on terror has been ongoing and has marked a generation of Muslims growing up since 2001. If you look at the prison statistics, the number of Muslims in the prison system has nearly tripled since 2001, which is shocking. That is an area where there is not enough data, and it does affect Muslim women because, although it is largely Muslim men in prison, they are the brothers, fathers, partners and sons of women, so that has an impact as well.

In terms of visibility, I work with young Muslim girls across the country every day and I ask them, “What does gendered Islamophobia look like?” Across the country, one of the first things they say is, “I’m perceived as a terrorist. I’m perceived as oppressed. I’m perceived as having no choice,” and those things are not true. When we are talking about hate crimes, when we are talking about speaking up and feeling empowered to be able to speak up for themselves, we should be aware that these things also affect young people’s mental health; a 12-year-old might say these things and they are combined with the pressures of school, the pressures of growing up during covid and the pressures of just being a young girl: these are the things that they internalise as well. We know that there is a really big issue there and with self-censorship. A lot of young people are afraid to speak to mental health services because they do not feel that they are the right ones to approach. I do not know if I am answering the question, but I guess it is in terms of the visibility of that pressure of being a young person, and it is the adultification of young people as well. Young Muslim girls and boys are often adultified in school settings, whether that is because of policies like Prevent, or because they are perceived through a racial lens, or because of their choice of wearing a hijab. There are many young people who start wearing hijab in secondary school and get asked, “Why are you wearing that? Who made you wear that? Was that your choice?” For lots of non-Muslim people, the choice to wear or not wear something is not interrogated in the same way and is not viewed as a threat or something to be surveilled.

Could you expand on what you mean by the adultification of Muslim girls?

Adultification does not mean that I think we should treat children in the same way we treat adults, but their opinions are valid and their needs are the same as adults. Adultification is when, for instance, they have made the choice to wear a hijab but they are seen as a threat. When they are saying, “I am a terrorist” it is because it is a threatening thing for them to make a change in their choice of clothing. It is a very paternalistic way to be treated, as if there must be a reason: you do not have a choice. All women of all different faiths have to hold the nuances of the agencies of choice and what choices we have with our bodies, but for young Muslim girls there is very specific adultification of that as well. Then there are also questions in the summer. A number of children we know have gone away to visit their home country and are then asked quite invasive questions. In fairness, it is a form of safeguarding around things like FGM, but it is said outright. That is part of the process of the adultification of a child, to ask them specific things about the body. When we talk about safeguarding, when we talk about Islamophobia, it is more about actually understanding young people and how to talk to them about complex things like their bodies or their choices. I hope that answers it.

That really helps, thank you. Irene has her hand up.

Could I just make a really quick point first? Before, it would be mostly Muslim women wearing the headscarf or the face veil who were worried about their safety, but I have noticed a shift in recent years—which was in our survey as well—that Muslim women not wearing a headscarf are now equally as worried. The anxiety is still greater for those who wear a headscarf, but there is not that much difference in it. So, for example, before the riots 17% were very worried about their safety but after the riots 74%, including hijab wearers and non-hijab wearers, were very worried about their safety. Something has shifted and I just wanted to highlight that.

That is huge. Did you say 17% to 74%?

Yes, 74% are very worried.

Irene, you had your hand up before.

I just want to add a quick note to say that when we talk about visibility, it is not just the physical appearance which is the most obvious. There are other ways to identify someone’s perceived Muslimness, and that could be a Muslim sounding name or practising Islam by, for example, praying. I just wanted to bring that to everyone’s attention: it is not only physical appearance but also other elements that could contribute to triggering hostility, prejudice, hate crime, and so forth.

We have mentioned self-censoring; are there any other impacts that gendered Islamophobia has on women and girls?

One of the things said about Muslim women is that they have poor health, particularly older women, and I noticed after lockdown that you started seeing them going climbing and walking and cycling and getting out and about, which is also good for their mental health. Then suddenly, when the riots happened, it was like, “We’re not going to go out and do those things anymore.” Their right to freedom of movement is being restricted and that is bad for their mental health. That impact is overlooked. We now have a domestic abuse helpline, and those safety issues can be used as an excuse by men to say, “You better not go out because it is not safe”: used as coercive control. Also a lot of what was coming up was that many people are worried about their elderly parents. If you do not live with your parents and they have gone down to the shop, you worry about them. It has a mental impact. Even my children, who are in their 20s, ring me and text me, “Have you got from A to B?” I do not wear a headscarf, but they are really worried about me. We think of the obvious things such as not going out or changing your dress, but there are more sinister things going on, and that is why we need to strengthen the code of practice for politicians. Politicians will say something and make accusations such as, “You’re an extremist” and hope that you are not going to do any kind of defamation claim because it is expensive. They get away with damaging a person’s career, their livelihood, their mental health. If the victim makes a claim and wins the case, all they get is a small apology and undisclosed damages, but their life is ruined. Two recent examples are Baroness Jacqueline Foster who accused an Oxford University student, a young lady, of being anti-Semitic but then had to apologise and pay damages, and Cabinet Minister Michelle Donelan who accused Professor Kate Sang of supporting Hamas and again had to pay damages. If people who are in power, in positions of responsibility, are going to do that and we do not hold them to account here with better codes of practice, then it is a lot easier to do it online and it is a lot easier for the media to do it, so the damage is wide-reaching.

David, did you want to come in on that point?

Yes, if I may. Baroness, it was a point that you made near the start of your input, around how since the riots, a significant percentage more of women do not feel safe going out and doing their usual thing. Obviously, the riots were six months ago now; is there a sense that that is starting to ease off, or that it is still at that level and perhaps could continue at that level, of people who are concerned about going out?

Before the riots, there was a concern because of the rhetoric that is online, the media and the politicians. The riots did not happen in a vacuum. It was almost a drip-drip effect; we could see it and then that happened. People are not now thinking, “No, we’ve got nothing to worry about,” six months on, because you only have to see what is happening online now with social media. For example, Elon Musk tweeting, and then lots of people retweeting him, or the fact that we recently have had these negative emails, and we do not get those types of emails. Something is different. We are going to have to see in the next 12 months or two years whether it eases off and perception changes and things change. It is too early at the moment.

Did anybody else have anything to add on that?

There was a recent report by Amnesty; it conducted a survey with the National Association of Muslim Police and found that 22% of its group had suffered Islamophobia in the police. Two of the staff it spoke to had returned from Hajj, come back from pilgrimage: the man had grown his beard and was referred to Prevent for that reason. There was a woman who had actually converted recently and so started wearing the hijab: she was spoken to about whether she was potentially being radicalised. There is something around how those stereotypes are linked to becoming a threat, whether it is a terrorist threat or an extremist threat. Religiosity could be simply growing a beard, or there is a report by the University of Warwick which showed that people working in the NHS were referring colleagues to Prevent because they had seen somebody booking tickets to go to Mecca. It is how those things are aligning right now. Suddenly your Muslimness in and of itself is seen as a threat. If you are a young person growing up and you are a young Muslim girl, you have to sometimes find ways to protect yourself in places of safety like schools; to censor yourself. We know that will lead to a huge impact on your mental health. The other thing I would say about racisms, including Islamophobia, is that academics like James Nazroo and Michael Marmot, and the UCL Institute of Health Equity, have shown that racism leads to poor mental and physical health, and will ultimately lead to premature death. That is the gravity for us when we are talking about Islamophobia. Even though it is really traumatic to have violent verbal rhetoric directed at you, there is also a scar on the body. Racism is not time defined, it stays with you, it suddenly makes you very suspicious of public institutions.

You mentioned police officers; I just wanted to add it is also doctors and solicitors. We published the Muslim Women’s Manifesto, you can have a copy of it, and, “Black, Asian and minority ethnic solicitors, doctors and police officers reported at higher rates to their professional bodies” of having these grievances against them. It feeds into the workplace. We always look at hate crime, but actually what is happening in the workplace is really concerning. It might be worse if you are wearing a headscarf or you have a beard, but they know you are Muslim because of your name. We need to look more in terms of statistics. With the NHS workers it is not just your colleagues, it could be your patients. I have friends who work at the NHS and they have been told, “I don’t want to be treated by you because you’re a Muslim,” and they are trying to help them and save their life. They do not get support though. What they say is, “We don’t get the support on how to deal with that, and when we report it, we don’t really get support from our seniors.”

Did you see any implication in that workplace piece of work that you have done, and the data you have uncovered, that there are any trade unions working in this space in terms of Islamophobia, and particularly for women workers?

I have not come across that; they may well be. I recently had two online conversations with our members, and they were really worried about the workplace. They said it is more subtle. Hate crime is easy, you know if someone has called you a terrorist or pulled your headscarf. This is very subtle, they are micro-aggressions and really hard to challenge. That is why a definition would help, because if you had a definition then you could have really clear policies in the workplace and if someone does not act you could hold people to account. I said, “How can we help you as an organisation?” And they said, “What we would love is for someone to give us some capacity-building coaching on how to have difficult and courageous conversations, because it is not always racism. Sometimes it is, but other times we just think our colleagues just don’t know what they said. They might have just said it and not realised the gravity of what they have said, but I feel bad because I like my colleague, but I felt uncomfortable. I don’t know how to have that difficult and courageous conversation.” That would be great, if the Government or somebody could fund that kind of training for women. It would be quite popular. For men as well, actually, not just women. I know this about women.

I have been working for my own party on LGBT policy and discrimination. One of the things that came up, and something you said struck a chord there, was about a generation now going into care, or having social care at home, and coming across discrimination again. You mentioned people being worried about elderly parents and where they go. Are the elderly coming across Islamophobia that is aimed directly at them through healthcare or social care?

Yes, we are getting reports, even from my own family as well when they have been in hospital. Again, it is micro, it is not obvious; it can be the roughness in the way you are treated, in the tone, for example. If they are in their 70s and 80s, and they have used the healthcare system for decades, they are noticing a shift, they are saying, “It never used to be like this.” Why are they saying that? “It never used to be like this.”

There are a couple of things I wanted to touch on. First, although it is not Islamophobia as such, is there evidence in your experiences of Muslim women being harassed from within their own communities, for example, by not conforming to community norms?

I would say a lot of that is online. I would say it is toxic masculinity. You have young men online who think they are heroes, and they are saying to women, “You’ve not got a headscarf on.” Even if they have a headscarf on, they are being told, “Your ears are showing, your earrings are showing, you’ve got nail polish on, you’ve got lipstick on.” That is toxic masculinity. If we end up addressing that in schools, you need general training, but it has to be bespoke for different communities and how women experience that. It is not just women who do not wear the headscarf, women who actually wear the headscarf are also being policed. My daughter is 22, and she raised it with me recently. She said, “Mum, I’m going to try to do something.” She is in her final year, so she recently set up an Instagram page called Muzzbaddie, and she said, “I’m going to put lots of diverse Muslim women to challenge the stereotypes of what a Muslim woman looks like, not just to the mainstream public society, but to Muslims as well, because Muslims also have a perception of what a Muslim woman looks like.” It is quite interesting what she is putting on there—I hope she grows it—to challenge. I am sure she will probably get a hard time. We need to do more of that challenging, and support to do that.

I guess what you were saying earlier about this concept of freedom of movement. I am going to take an example of someone called Binni. She wears a niqab, which is the face veil, and she has been running a Muslim Girls Fence in Birmingham, in Ladywood, for the past two years. In those sessions, there are people of all different faiths, predominantly Muslim women, but she recognised that in her own community there were things being said that were potentially homophobic or sexist, and she said, “Actually, that’s not the space that we want to be because we always say we are a safe space. This is a space for us to learn, to share and to grow with each other.” As a result, we have worked with an LGBT fencing team in Birmingham. We are now doing more community organising across that. It is what you are saying about Instagram, or freedom of movement: if we are afraid to build communities with each other, to learn from each other, to also make mistakes with each other, then our own internalised sexism or homophobia within our communities can become rampant. Particularly when we are talking about toxic masculinity. A lot of the young people we talk to are talking about people on Instagram who are claiming to be sheikhs or in positions of faith, who are actually exposing quite a lot of sexist and misogynistic views, but that is not what our faith is. That is a difficult thing when we have portrayals of “the Muslim problem” in the media. We also have a feeling of wanting to protect our community, but actually if we are more honest about the structures we were talking about that exist, which allow sexism to exist, then if the patriarchy exists for us all, hopefully we can undo that.

The only thing I was going to add to the example of Binni is that with Muslim Girls Fence there is this combination of physical exercise through fencing, there is a space for creativity, and there is a space for being able to talk freely and safely. It is that unusual combination, and it is led from the ground up, it is rooted and led by those women. We need more of that.

Absolutely. The next question from me is around the variety of bans that we have been seeing across Europe and other nations, around things like face coverings, for example. Do we know what effect this has had on women in those countries, and have bans on forms of dress in other countries affected how Muslim women feel here as well?

Well first, Muslim women must have the right to dress as freely as men, which does not seem to be always happening. I do not know why women’s clothing is seen as a threat to the west, it baffles me. Women have this battle of occasionally being policed internally, and then externally in society. It is usually men, because even if you look at what is happening across Europe in terms of banning the veil or the headscarf, it is usually led by men. It is sexist in nature. When something happens abroad, women worry what is going to happen in the UK because the rhetoric is online, it is picked up by people here and then repeated. I have not looked at the data, but you can probably see when something is talked about in France or in another European country, the impact that that has here. Whoever has the resources to do a detailed study could see where the spikes are there. Again, we have started to see here as well people saying, “Oh, let’s ban this, let’s ban that.” We never used to have that before, but we have started to get more and more of that. Of course, what I am worried about, what we are worried about in the next four and a half years, are the culture wars that have started already until the next election. It is particular politicians appealing to particular segments of the society, to see who can outdo the other to be as anti-Muslim as possible. The consequences of that, who bears the brunt of that, will be Muslim men as well, but mostly Muslim women. Whether it is verbal abuse in the workplace, or physical violence. I worry what is going to happen in the next four and a half years.

My research has examined this topic in the context of women in niqab, the full veil, and what the evidence shows is that it is a form of institutional gendered Islamophobia. Banning the veil is a form of oppressing women, in the same way as forcing women to wear the veil. It is similar to that. Bans in countries like France and Belgium have implications in this country. We live in a globalised world; events that happen locally, nationally, and internationally affect people’s lives here. Although it is not illegal, it is not a crime to wear the veil in this country, it is seen as deviant. It is seen as immoral. That can lead to an increase in hate crime targeted at Muslim women. There are clear links between what is happening in other countries and this country, especially in the context of banning the veil.

We have recently concluded an inquiry into non-consensual intimate image abuse. During that week, we talked about the fact that sometimes there are non-consensual images that are not sexual, but culturally inappropriate. For example, a woman not wearing a hijab and being photographed by somebody in a setting where she would not normally be photographed not wearing her hijab. Maybe to you, Baroness, is this a concern?

It happens occasionally, it is not a big phenomenon. We have had it on the helpline. This young lady, she was in college, she had male friends and there was a photograph of her, but the person that was blackmailing her with the photo was actually one of her female friends saying, “I am going to share this with your parents,” to try to get her into trouble. Now, the police did not take it seriously because they said it was not intimate image abuse. The police did not join the dots to think that actually what this young lady was doing—her alleged friend—was inciting honour-based abuse on that girl. We then had to explain to the police officer it is harassment, but it is also inciting. I do not know if there is anything in law about inciting honour-based abuse, maybe the law needs to be strengthened, or maybe it is there but guidelines need to be strengthened. Then they warned the girl and she stopped doing it. It is a problem, but to put that into law would be hard. We could just have some better guidelines and training for police officers on what the impact for that girl could be.­­­ ­­

As far as I know, non-consensual but legal intimate images are protected under the Online Safety Act 2023, so it is protected in terms of the legal framework. However, I do not know if people necessarily know that they can report it to the police. They might be so scared even to share that information with their family that, again, they might think, “I shouldn’t speak to anyone about that,” and this could have harmful implications for their mental health, physical health and so forth. But yes, to answer that question, it is in legislation as far as I know.

Raheel, maybe if I can come to you to just look at Muslim boys and Muslim boys’ behaviour. In relation to this whole area of cultural image abuse online and general image abuse online, do you think there is a piece of work that needs to be done directed at Muslim boys, and how could that be handled?

There is something about misogyny being a problem for everyone. It is not necessarily more prevalent in one community or another, based on culture or religion. Misogyny expresses itself in all walks of life. There is something about the role that schools can play in education in terms of misogyny, but also it is intersecting with racism. That needs training for teachers, but it also needs schools to be a safe space to have those conversations. We know some organisations that are doing that work: it is hard work and it takes a number of years to be able to have those conversations, to maybe change behaviour and the way that young boys and men think. They are also not separate from wider society; if we have people in power who find it easy to abuse women, and Muslim women, then that is going to be copied, right? If you have a politician who says something, why would you not then think it is okay to do that as well? Where does the blame lie? It is about the wider societal issues, but it is also about how you practically create resources for schools to start that work, and community spaces as well. As Allia was talking about, the space that Binni has created, that is the kind of space where you could also have those conversations, and it would be fine.

The Government have talked about creating a boys’ and men’s ambassador. How do you think that role could possibly feature as a positive in tackling gendered Islamophobia? Irene, you are nodding; do you want to come in?

Well, in terms of my work on misogyny, not just about gendered Islamophobia, we need boys and men to be part of the solution. Often, we focus on victims to have the confidence to report their experiences, to protect themselves, to stay safe. We do not focus enough on how we can use education to raise awareness among those communities, those groups that actually are more likely to be the perpetrators, whether as direct offenders or witnesses of that behaviour who are supporting those attitudes. Whether it is in school, higher education, or employment, we need to bring boys and men into driving those solutions and driving change.

There are mixed views on whether there should be a formal definition of Islamophobia. What is your own view on that?

It is controversial, but just to give it a bit of context, it has now been about 30 years since the first attempt by the Runnymede Trust to define Islamophobia, and after almost three decades we still do not have an agreed published definition. In 2017, the Runnymede Trust revisited the definition, and in 2018 we had the APPG inquiry, and the definition was offered as, “Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.” Although I appreciate that that definition is not universally accepted, unless we define Islamophobia, it means that there is no mechanism for accountability. Now, what is being argued is that it can prevent and discourage criticism of Islam under free speech. However, this is irrelevant to the question of whether Muslims in this country and elsewhere face discrimination, face hate crime, and how we can tackle this. The definition offered by the APPG can actually resolve the confusion that emerges from the term Islamophobia. Islamophobia in terms of the word, “phobia” suggests mental illness or fear, rather than picking out the discriminatory attitudes, the hate crime. The APPG, by clarifying what exactly it means, helps to avoid that confusion. When it comes to criticism of Islam, Islam is a system of beliefs, it should be subject to criticism. No one disagrees with that, as a clear consequence of free speech. Islam, as any religion or set of beliefs, should be criticised, as long as this is legitimate, and the intention is not to incite hatred and hostility towards a wider community. We need a statutory definition. This can actually help with the confusion that exists around the term. I hope this answers your question.

It certainly does. Would everyone agree with that view?

We need a definition because at the moment it will help when police are dealing with hate crime. As I mentioned before, if you are an employee and you are bringing a claim, you can have clear policies. A definition­­­­­—whatever the definition is, whatever you want to call it—will provide clarity on what is included and what is not included. That is what everyone is arguing about at the moment and that is why we need a definition. Otherwise, by not having a definition, we have seen what has happened. Anti-Muslim hate has just got worse and worse and worse. If we do not have a definition, it will just get worse until people start getting killed. It will just get really bad. We need a definition, and then we can debate the ins and outs of a definition. Obviously, Irene has mentioned the APPG definition, there is the Runnymede definition, there is the one you did which the UN uses as well: maybe it is time we put them all in a hat and talk through them again one more time, before we have a definition, to make sure that we allow free speech. It might hurt me to see my religion critiqued, but usually the examples that are given are the types of examples that I am challenging myself as a Muslim feminist. They usually pick quite fringe interpretations, and then they say that everybody thinks like that. We will have to challenge that. What we need to do is protect Muslims. Every day that goes by that we are not protecting Muslims from anti-Muslim hate and discrimination and prejudice, whether it is using a service, in the workplace, out on the road, or online, more harm is being caused.

On that note, it is already an offence to target a person on the grounds of their religion or race. Would I be right in interpreting that having a definition would help the police or the Crown Prosecution Service very much?

Yes, they do not have a clear definition, so it is subjective. There are different police officers in the same police force, and when the story is being relayed to them by the victim, they might interpret it differently. When you have a definition, it is really clear, it is set in stone. Muslims are not asking for special treatment, we are just asking for the same treatment, because if you look at faith-based hate crime, the Jewish and Muslim communities have the worst hate crime towards them. The Jewish community has a legal definition, so why can we not also have a definition? It will protect people. Forget about whether you are anti-religion or pro-religion, it is about protecting people. We have great legal minds in the building and some great definitions; I am sure we can come up with something.

A definition would help to focus minds that there is a specific form of racism. Where it will become trickier, if there is a definition, is in the implementation of this. For instance, the Prevent policy is Islamophobic, and there has been a whole coalition of different organisations, including Amnesty International and Liberty, that have come together to write reports on that. How a definition like that is then used to scrutinise policies like that will be a useful question, as will what happens in terms of schools. We know that in schools there are moves to have racism maybe included as part of safeguarding: there are campaigns to do that, to move to a less eurocentric curriculum, with teachers being made aware of the issues that young people bring into school. For me, it is about how the definition tackles the structural issues, rather than just the individual prejudice against somebody on the streets.

It is sad that Muslims are being racialised, and it is cultural racism as well, because when you are walking down the road you are looking for identity markers: headscarf, thawb, hat, beard. You are looking for something, are you not? People will say, “Oh, we can’t do a definition, Muslims are not a race.” Actually they are being racialised, and there is so much evidence for that. Yes, I am confident we can come up with something.

Baroness, you mentioned the Law Commission earlier on, and I wondered, should the Government commit to introducing a Hate Crime Act to bring all hate crime legislation together, as it has been in Scotland and has been recommended, as you said, by the Law Commission? How important would that be?

I am on the Law Commission board, but that was before my time. We want to make things simpler. In Parliament, we do this all the time. When we have had legislation after legislation, we sometimes bring them together under one Act. We do it all the time. It is time we did it now for this. There are four different Acts. Scotland has done it, so maybe we can learn from it to see how it is working better. It will make it easier for police officers and the lay public. When I was trying to learn about it to write about it in the report, I got confused. It is actually good for the public to know what the law clearly says, and to hold people to account when they are not applying the law.

There has been a lot of controversy in Scotland about the law, about how it has been framed. I just wondered if you felt that it would be useful? I can see Irene nodding her head, you have probably seen a lot about this. Are there lessons that we could learn in bringing the laws together for the rest of the UK, from what has happened in Scotland?

Unfortunately, it has not resulted in an increase in reporting. Again, we need to identify what the issues are, what the barriers are, and why it has not translated to the communities that need it the most. Why have we not seen a rise in reporting? For me, this is quite worrying. However, we can learn from Scotland, but what is important to emphasise is also the symbolic power of that Act. The message that we send to people and vulnerable communities is that we take it seriously and that we care. That message is really important because it can make communities feel safer. It might not necessarily lead to a reduction in hate crime, but it increases that sense of belonging, that society and policymakers care for us. It can lead to more preventive measures, whether that is in terms of local or national organisations, because there is more awareness and more emphasis, and maybe a bit more funding from the local government to invest in such initiatives. Hate crime is very much like a pyramid: unless you challenge those micro-aggressions, which seem really harmless but actually can cause so much harm, those attitudes can escalate to more serious forms of harm, leading up to genocide. Unless we challenge these behaviours, the so-called micro-aggressions, harmless banter, harmless jokes and attitudes at that base level of the pyramid, then it can be quite difficult to tackle hate crime. The symbolic aspect of what Scotland is doing with the Act is really, really important. However, legislation and the weight of the criminal law cannot work on their own. We need open and public and respectful debate, but we also need better education to bring real change. Legislation cannot work on its own when you have politicians and social media platform owners promoting hate towards certain communities. It cannot work. We need real change based on education, and accountability for those who incite that hostility and hatred towards communities.

We have touched on this already when we talked a bit about reporting Islamophobia, and we have talked about how people may be too scared, they do not trust the police and there is no definition. Those are three barriers to reporting that we have already discussed. Are there any others?

It is really interesting. We have been having lots of conversations about the fact that there has been an increase in police in schools. Sorry, this is coming to the point that you were making. For a lot of the teachers in these schools there is a sense that police mean safety for those young people, but with the young people who we speak to, especially from racialised communities, they do not see the police as being a safe presence in schools. Recently, we have had that horrific child Q case, then there was a report from the Children’s Commissioner which said nearly 3,000 children had been strip-searched by police: half of them did not have an appropriate adult present; children as young as eight had been strip-searched; if you were black, you were six times more likely to be strip-searched. Although it was predominantly black boys, those black boys also know black girls, and there have been some black girls who have been strip-searched. All that context is really important when we talk about reporting and who we trust. For me, if schools were spaces that felt safer and young people could speak to their teachers about these issues, that would be a different way to tackle that issue rather than bringing more police into schools, or just reporting it to police.

In terms of schools, when you have anti-Muslim bullying in schools it is not necessarily always taken seriously. I would like to see some stats around that: collecting statistics on protected characteristic-related bullying when bullying is reported in schools so you have the data there for all types of protected characteristics, or it could be general bullying. Then the schools publish that, and you can see if there is a problem, for example, with anti-Muslim prejudice in a particular school that has not been dealt with. In terms of reporting, as well as women thinking, “I’m not going to be taken seriously,” some of it actually might be that they are time-poor. They have caring responsibilities, then they go there and think, “Well, nothing’s going to happen, I haven’t got evidence, it was drive-by.” But there is an educational piece around the importance of reporting because we need the data. There is also a lack of trust. In the report that I wrote, we were testing opinion and one third trusted the police. It was the same for the reporting hubs. I thought the reporting hubs would be more trusted actually, but it was the same as the police. What we need to do now is have a fresh look at how Muslims are reporting. You cannot just have one organisation; Muslims are so diverse across the country. What you would need is several different hubs that feed into something centrally. Also, Muslim women will probably feel more comfortable reporting to maybe women’s centres rather than a generic national organisation. Interestingly, our helpline is predominantly a domestic abuse helpline. We say, “You can call us up about anything,” and in the last 12 months, we have probably had a couple of dozen cases now; some is hate crime but a lot of it is actually discrimination in the workplace or other services. We obviously say, “Go through the grievance process and go through the complaints process.” We do not have the right metrics to record on our database so now we are wondering whether we need to develop a separate database, which is going to cost us money. But we are thinking about doing that and trying to use volunteers to absorb the calls then applying for some money. We have even started looking at whether there are lawyers who can give pro bono help. Some cases we are getting are professional women doing really well in their careers experiencing discrimination because of their faith, not all wearing a headscarf, and then we are having to find discrimination law barristers. We have discrimination law barrister trustee Sophie Garner on our board but she cannot possibly take them all on. We are now looking at whether we can get some sort of pro bono group of lawyers. Yes, reporting is a problem.

Before we move on, the next set of questions is about education and schools so it would be really useful if we can keep the hate crime reporting to other sectors. Sorry, Catherine.

Yes, that is fine. Irene, I was going to throw in my final question in this section to you as well— I feel like the Baroness has already answered a bit of it—so you can answer this and the previous question all together. What are the barriers, and then what are the challenges for the voluntary and statutory services supporting women and girls reporting hate crime?

Absolutely. Just to add to what has already been covered, my concern in schools, but also organisations more generally, is there is a mentality of, “No problem here.” They might be more reluctant to inform the police and they try to resolve the issue internally, but in that case often the victim is punished for the offender’s behaviour. They try to resolve it internally but this is not really effective because of that mentality of, “No problem here.” When it comes to reporting to the authorities, often there is a lack of empathy on the part of the police and authorities more generally. There is a lack of understanding, there is a lack of religious and cultural empathy, understanding and intelligence, and that can lead to, again, not feeling confident to report experiences in the future based on previous negative experiences with the police. This is why third-party reporting organisations are really, really helpful in terms of bridging that gap between the authorities and those individuals or communities that do not feel confident, or do not feel safe to report their experiences to the authorities. We know historically, there has been a challenging relationship, for example, between the police and black and Asian communities. In terms of organisations and the challenges they face, obviously, funding is a key issue that many organisations struggle to secure year by year. But more generally, there is a lack of investment in training. For example, police training on hate crime is an online, one-hour exercise, a tick-box exercise not involving real life experiences, not involving the communities that are the targets of this abuse. Often, it is just about hate crime, it is not specific to Islamophobia or antisemitism or disablism, let alone the intersectionality of those types of hate crime. The lack of adequate training is across the board. Other issues include, as I mentioned before, lack of awareness and empathy, and these barriers might be even more obvious for new migrant communities that have already experienced challenges in terms of working with statutory organisations.

I would like to add some really quick points. I submitted a written question to Equality Advisory Support Service, which is for when you have discrimination in the workplace, asking what percentage were faith-related inquiries. The response I had was, “Only 2%.” If you go on to my name you can look at the answer. G4S has the contract. I do not know why it keeps getting the contract; it should be evaluated because that is a really good place to go to get advice. Then I asked, “What percentage were Muslim?” “Oh, we do not have that data.” If it does not have data, then it is not delivering the service because out of the 2%, Muslims are going to be a tiny proportion, and one in three of the ethnic minority population is Muslim. It is not doing its job, so that contract needs to be re-evaluated

Do you have anything else you want to add? No. Anyone else on hate crime reporting at all? No? Okay, I will move on to Natalie and on to education.

Is there evidence of girls self-censoring or hiding their Muslim identity in schools?

Yes, absolutely. Allia can speak more to this. Allia, maybe you can speak about some detail, but it has just become normalised. The concern that I have is that it is not normally picked up by school either. Unless you create a space to have that conversation, or create a safe space for children and pupils, then there is a feeling of over-surveillance, which again, comes through policies like Prevent. We have spoken to teachers and young people, and the reasons why people might get referred to Prevent are things like drawing a gun in a notebook. When you are in a school where that is a possibility, you will censor yourself. As Allia was saying before, if you are seen as a terrorist threat or possibly an extremist because of what might be happening in the news, then you are more likely to censor yourself as well. The repercussions of that are really harmful. We have created a mental health resource that has come out from Muslim Girls Fence, partly because we did not feel there was anything tailored to specifically meet those needs.

What about wider pupils? Is it fears of how wider pupils will respond, or is it just the wider school environment?

It is a bit of both. According to Runnymede, one in three Muslim students experience Islamophobic abuse. It is not clear whether that is from teachers or from other pupils. There needs to be a bit of clarity there, as Baroness Gohir was saying about the data; how are we reporting that? From the personal experiences of speaking to young people and girls, it is mostly the thought of censoring themselves. We talked earlier about bans, there was literally a ban earlier this year with the Michaela School—I have never worked with it—in which it banned congregated prayer. That was held up. That is an example of how when I was working in the schools, children were asking me, unprompted, “Are we not allowed to pray now in school?” That is not gendered. The concepts that the young people were expressing to me were that they were feeling like when they are together it is seen as dangerous. They asked, “Why is me praying a bad thing? It’s not affecting my education, I’m doing it in the break, I’m not leaving class in the middle of class to pray.” It is those smaller things of, “Do I feel safe? Do I feel happy to bring these different parts of myself here?” Muslim Girls Fence has worked with a school in Tower Hamlets for the past four years called Mulberry, which is great. As part of its risk assessment and health and safety for P.E., girls were not allowed to wear hijab during P.E. and they were really upset about this. We said, “But have you ever spoken to the SLT or anything like that about this?” And they said, “No, but they’ll obviously not listen to us. Why would they listen to us?” And we said, “Well, because you’re very important, because you are part of the school, because the school is there for you.” They made a photo campaign of them fencing with their hijabs, they had all these amazing Olympians who were wearing hijab, all these historical people who wore hijab and have done sports. Not all these girls wear hijab actually, so it was a real mix of them. Then they presented it to SLT, they had teachers and students sign it. The school then changed its school policy. That is an example of how if you are in a school environment in which not just your identity but your voice, particularly as a young girl, is important and is valued, and you can see that you can make change, whether it is being in a room like this, being in an SLT room, being in all those different things—maybe I am going on—if we are allowed to think, to dream and to make change, then that is a great thing.

Are there any other effects that you think this self-censoring has on young girls?

It takes a massive toll on their mental health. There is a lot of pressure, whether you are Muslim or not, to look a certain way, regardless of your gender, but particularly for young girls. That is often what they talk about: the pressure of the internet, the pressure of social media. You were talking about the Instagram people who also get loads of hate, and the amount of hate we get in our very neutral work; Instagram is terrifying. The Centre of Mental Health and the Woolf Institute put out in 2023, “Muslims face some of the greatest mental health inequalities, yet too many encounter significant barriers to support.” Only 2.6% of Muslims referred to NHS talking therapies actually complete their treatment. That statistic makes us think about what services young people are being provided with that are culturally competent but also feel like a safe space for them to be able to complete that. If we do not have the literacy in the older community around mental health, then how does that impact our young people today as well? We made a video with young people about mental health in Tower Hamlets, and they said that the best support you can get for mental health is other girls in Tower Hamlets. That is great to get that support, but I never want it to be just that your peers are your support. We want to have your teachers, and all the pastoral support in the school, and wider, to feel like a place in which we can all get supported. That internalised Islamophobia affects their attainment in school, but also their feelings about themselves.

I just want to give a quick example. I had a call from a girl doing GCSEs last year. On her way to and from school, she would get bullied because of her headscarf. She was so worried about her exams, but then she was getting this from young lads, so she removed her headscarf during her GCSE period. She knew she was going to until the summer period and then put it back on. I just wanted to share that story. That self-censoring can happen also coming in and out of school, so there probably needs to be more support for girls to report bullying or abuse that they are facing to and from school. You also could have it in very highly Muslim populated areas, and a girl might choose not to wear a headscarf, and she could be pressured to wear one, or teased and bullied, “Why are you not wearing one?” It also can work the other way. Q33            Natalie Fleet: There is currently no specific national policy for schools and colleges on preventing and tackling Islamophobia. How useful would it be to have one?

As part of our Schools with Roots programme, we work with schools to improve their relationship with communities. That also involves teacher training. We have been running teacher training for nearly two years now at different universities. Part of that is around understanding what different racisms look like, and how they might appear in the classroom. It is also for teachers to understand their power and positionality with communities who might not feel they have the agency to challenge something that is happening in the school that they do not feel comfortable about. It is also just something that can be done through the curriculum. The curriculum is eurocentric. If social change is the line, we are trying to intervene really early as teachers are being trained, but we are also working in schools because once teachers are in schools they are really busy. What teachers say to us that they need, and what we try to provide, is a set of resources and training that they can run with on Monday morning. There is a real plethora of diversity, equity and inclusion training at the moment, which does not necessarily give teachers the tools to do something on Monday morning. Those really practical interventions are necessary.

It has to come from the top, from the Education Secretary. I remember over a year ago a message going from the Education Secretary to the schools, colleges and universities saying, “Make sure that you tackle antisemitism robustly.” In that same letter she could have said, “Also tackle Islamophobia,” and instead at the bottom of the sheet it was just the number for Tell MAMA, for example. It has to come from the top. You can have policies, but there seems to be a difference. Of course, a policy would then help, a definition would help, you could use a definition as a bit of a framework to help. I know that would be the legal definition. Sometimes when bullying happens in schools, it probably meets the legal threshold, but it is not reported to the police. They definitely need some guidelines and policies.

What are the common misconceptions and prejudices that Muslim women face in the jobs market and the workplace?

They worry about first getting a job. First, they have quite a high unemployment rate, but that is not all due to discrimination; it might be due to other factors like caring. But when they return to the job market, or they are a graduate and trying to get a job, it is the interview process. It might be the name. I want to give you an example of what one young lady shared with us recently. She was interning with us, and she said that she was trying to get internships and work experience at different law firms, and she wears a headscarf. When she stylised her headscarf differently, she managed to get something, and when she took it off it was more welcoming and positive. She actually then managed to get some work experience, but she was experimenting with how she was treated differently depending on how she stylised it, and if she took it off. Then in the workplace, women worry about career progression, training opportunities, promotion, pay. One lady, she was actually in a law firm, said, “I realised I was getting paid less for the same job.” But she did not want to complain because she would rather just move to a different firm. She said if she complained, “My career could be over because people talk to each other and that would be the end of my career.” It is quite varied in terms of people’s experience in the workplace. Now, they could go to a tribunal but the problem at the moment is as a Muslim woman you might think you are being discriminated against because of your faith, race and being a woman, that intersecting identity. At the moment, as the law stands you have to do one case for your sex, one for your race, and one for your faith. You can do them at the same time, but what happens is when they do the comparator on the sex part, they will compare you to, say, a white woman; on the race part, say if you are Asian, they could compare you to maybe a black woman or an Asian woman of a different faith; and then on the faith part, they might compare your experience to a Muslim man. In each of them you could fail, and they will say, “No, you’re not being discriminated,” but if you look at the intersecting identity of you being discriminated against as a Muslim woman of colour, then you can start seeing the discrimination. The Labour Government are thinking of changing that, which would be a good thing. I do not know whether this will get changed or not, I hope it does, but at the moment my understanding is, if you are found guilty on all three strands the compensation is the same. Let us for argument’s sake say it is £1,000, and the employer gets found guilty on all three types of discrimination, my understanding is it is £1,000, even if it is for race, faith and gender. It should be an uplift for each one, in my experience. It should be £1,000 for sex discrimination, £1,000 for race and £1,000 for faith. There should be an uplift, so maybe that could be included in any law, that would help Muslim women. On the Ministry of Justice, I was trying to do a search, the search tool needs to be better as well because you can search tribunal cases.

Irene, what, if any, specific support do Muslim women need in the workplace, and how can employers provide this support?

There is this notion of Muslim penalty in the workplace, especially for Muslim women. Not just in terms of recruitment, but as I said before, accessing training, support, retention, progression, promotion. There is the Equality Act 2010, which is fit for purpose, but it is not necessarily the first port of call. It is also difficult to access the legal system in discrimination cases. In terms of putting in place mechanisms to prevent such discrimination from taking place, for example, in terms of recruitment, name-blind applications could potentially help. Also, I would like to see analysis of annual recruitment intake to check Muslim numbers. I would also like to know the number of Muslim women and men in leadership positions in organisations. We find that at the top there is a lack of diversity when it comes to the Muslim community. Even if they are part of an organisation, they are less likely to be managers. Why is that the case? Do they not have the education or the experience, or are they discriminated against because of their religion, gender and all the other layers that we mentioned before? It is also important to have a workplace that accommodates religious and cultural needs. For example, in my research with Nottinghamshire police about black and Asian police officers or staff, it was evident with those who identified as Muslim that their religious needs were not always met. For example, asking for annual leave during Ramadan and that not being accommodated, asking for time for praying and again not being accommodated. Some participants said, “If I wanted to smoke, they would give me a break, but when it comes to praying, I am treated differently because of my religion.” It is important to provide and accommodate religious and cultural needs, in terms of flexible working around Ramadan, making sure that there are prayer rooms that are appropriate for people to pray, and being involved in Islamophobia Awareness Month, but also sponsoring such events around Islamophobia Awareness Month. It is not just in November, it is every day, every month. It could be activities around that idea of raising awareness.

As a Member of Parliament for a predominantly Caucasian constituency, apart from closer to Derby City, which has people who follow various different religions predominantly from India and Pakistan, the rest of my constituency is very white, and so I am frequently thinking to myself, “How can I be more inclusive? How can I almost force that issue?” This is all really fascinating. I also have a campaign to get more girls and women into tech, and STEM and STEAM, and that is all women, so race and religious beliefs are an additional consideration.

I want to add something quickly, and it could link to your STEM. We know that Muslims, and particularly Muslim women, have high unemployment rates. Muslims have the lowest uptake of apprenticeships, and it is tax efficient for companies to have apprenticeships. Maybe we could push to try to get companies to get more Muslims, or maybe reach out to try to get more Muslim apprenticeships. It will obviously help with the economy and get them into employment, but also more in the workplace. Irene mentioned Islamophobia Awareness Month. That is quite a negative framing, in a way. You have LGBT History Month, Black History Month, Women’s History Month, South Asian Heritage Month. I do not really have any funding for it, but in March I am launching Muslim Heritage Month. It is all about positive storytelling. It is a way of tackling stereotypes and challenging discrimination, but in a positive way. It is about the ties that unite us, the commonalities that people have, the contribution of Muslims in British history, and now in every sector, and positive storytelling. I have started reaching out to TikTok, even X, by the way—it was responsive actually—various football clubs, Warner Brothers, I have gone across sector to mainstream. It cannot be Muslims talking to each other. I am having an event on 11 March hosted by TikTok. I know people complain about social media, but whether we like it or not, it also has a reach to influence people. We will have some TikTokers there. If anyone would like to come, please let me know. It is a Ramadan event on 11 March. I just wanted to share that good practice.

My last question for this section is aimed at you, Raheel, and you may want to feed in, Allia. We probably started to segue into this, talking about apprenticeships, but what work do you do to support Muslim girls leaving school and entering the workplace?

We have not done anything specific, but it speaks to that question around, as a young person in school, what are you learning about how you can bring yourself into that space? If you feel that you have to censor part of yourself, or leave part of yourself at home, you will take that into the labour market. Irene gave examples about how there is an onus on employers to provide nice spaces to be able to pray in. We hear stories of a stationery cupboard and, “That is your place that you can go and pray,” or not making enough flexibility around Ramadan so you can work from home more. There is something around how a young person goes through the school system. It feels like there is almost an inevitability, right? If during school you are learning that your identity is something that you need to slightly hide, then you will take that into the workplace. That is not going to benefit you. There is something about that starting really early, in school.

Part of our work is that we employ young people, so for us that is a big part of everything that we do. Even us coming today, all the notes I have written, I have worked with a young person and had a paid phone call with them in which they are consultants in all the work that we do. A lot of the coaches are young people who came through doing the community sessions and are now paid coaches. Lots of them get support financially, and support with all the different things to set up their own community sessions. For us the question is what are the resources that we have and how then can we support them to do that? This is not necessarily to do with gendered Islamophobia, but it is no surprise that we need more resources for young people, whether that is youth clubs, apprenticeships, or all those spaces in which young people have the freedom and confidence to explore the workforce and employment, and that is what we try to do.

A really fundamental part of all our work is that we work with communities and they are part of making whatever we make, whether that is our health resources or education. They are also learning a different set of skills. They are learning how to write stuff, create resources, be able to present to different people as well. There is also something about taking up space in the public space. For the past few years, we have regularly been at Eid in the Square in Trafalgar Square. We have had Muslim Girls Fence on, and people are fencing. We have had hundreds of people fence in Trafalgar Square and it is amazing. There is something really joyous about that. Those also then open up opportunities to talk about other things like employment, or like STEM or STEAM.

This section is probably mostly for Allia and Raheel, but anyone can contribute. What are the barriers faced by Muslim women who want to participate in sport, would you say?

Well almost a third of British Muslim women describe their current fitness activity as inactive, so that is a bit of context: 97% of people who responded to this Muslimah Sports Association survey said they wanted to increase their participation in sports, yet 37% were not involved in any sport activity. That gives us an indication that there is a want, but as you said, there are barriers in place. We often think about those barriers and they have been talked about in a way that makes assumptions about our lives or interests, but actually it is things like barriers to access, ranging from costs, times, locations, how the offer is marketed. They do not affect Muslim women alone. There are lots of people of colour and non-Muslim women who might feel like the local gym is not for them. What we are trying to do is create spaces in which Muslim women are centred, but actually it is not just Muslim women who come to our spaces. We also talk about those assumptions that we are housebound: we are not allowed to go out to do sports, when it is actually about is it free? Is it local? Is it at a time of evening or day in which it is accessible, in terms of childcare or in terms of Maghrib in the evening? Is it really basic stuff? In Doncaster, one of our coaches, Akilah, helped to set up a Muslim women’s swimming club after starting up fencing. They were all really panicked and saying, “There’s these windows for the swimming pool, but we need them because it’s at the leisure centre and the parents like to watch the kids when they’re playing, and we have not Muslim-only, but women-only things.” It just involved having a conversation with someone to say, “You know, you could just put some blinds in, and actually it’s not going to change anything in terms of health and safety, and we’ll pull them up when you don’t need them.” There are no wrong questions. We can work together to make sure that all sports spaces and community spaces are more accessible, not just for Muslim women, but for people of different access needs, genders and faiths. A big part of it is thinking about the appropriate facilities, family commitments, and things like that.

I just remember speaking to a couple of pupils, Muslim girls who wore the hijab, and there was an assumption made by the sports teacher that they would not want to play football. When we started to work with British Fencing, something we thought could be really interesting was that when you are fencing, everybody is wearing the same uniform. At the time, Ibtihaj Muhammad, a black Muslim woman, wore the hijab once for the US Olympic team. It is not that there is not the enthusiasm, it is just about making that opportunity available.

We have all our paperwork, we have some really good examples, such as Khadija Mellah, the jockey. It is not the sort of thing that you normally see in the media, is it? And women training as lifeguards, because all the lifeguards were usually traditionally men. It seems like there is a bit of progress being made. How do you think that we can ensure that the wider community or religious leaders are supportive of women’s participation in sport, or is that not an issue, do you think?

One of the things that we have done in Leyton, in East London Mosque and in Bradford is run sessions in mosques. That is really important as well; we bring it to the place. Then people say, “Oh, that’s actually really fun. Maybe I will go to the community centre now.” Even if it is just once a month that we go in, that is a bit of community building but also learning from each other. Also, as part of our religion we have something called sunnah sports. Those are sports that the prophet played, so it is things like archery, horse riding, but also swords, so fencing. Sports are actually a big part of our faith, and so often we talk about it in terms of that, and in terms of our wellbeing. We pray five times a day, but also how we look after our bodies and minds is a really big part of our faith as well, so we often talk about that. I do not know if you would say there is more stigma, but a big way in which some people in our community talk about mental health is through sports.

Another layer of our work is something that we call, “public imagination.” When we are doing all this work on the ground, it is really important to be able to show that publicly. Muslim Girls Fence has been part of the This Girl Can campaign, and again, that visible representation is a really good counter to some negativity. Was she not part of that photography competition?

Yes, one of our fencers in Birmingham won the Portrait of Britain last year.

Again, it is taking up public space. It is taking up public space online or physically, like Eid in the Square. That is a really important part of all the work that we do as well, but it is rooted in that practical stuff initially.

First, in schools, there is a stereotype around girls, and this applies probably to all girls. There is probably least investment in girls’ sports, and then there is probably a hierarchy in terms of whether you are a minority ethnic girl, a Muslim girl. That needs to be addressed; schools offering the sports in the first place. Then when you are talking about women now, adults now, the census shows they have the poorest health. You might want something gentle like a walking group. After covid, you saw lots of women going hiking, cycling, swimming and all those things. That needs to be supported, particularly team sport, because people say to Muslims, “Oh, you’re not integrated,” and in sports and team sports, you are meeting people from diverse backgrounds. That is good for integration and community cohesion, but it actually challenges stereotypes and is good for challenging discrimination indirectly and softly. We need to highlight good practice. Sometimes parents initially can be barriers themselves in schools, but maybe we need to get the parents out to do some of this stuff, and we need to highlight good practice. I want to give you a couple of examples. The Palace for Life Foundation, the football club, has charities, it has the Get Involved programme. The England and Wales Cricket Board has the Dream Big Desi Women programme. Everyone loves football and lots of girls are getting into football, and each football team has a charity arm to it, so on 5 March at 2 pm, we are holding an event with the following football charities: Crystal Palace, Arsenal, Leicester, Wolverhampton, Aston Villa and the Premier League. They are going to highlight what they are doing in terms of trying to be more inclusive in their local communities, including with Muslim women and girls. So 5 March 2 pm, if you would like to come along please let me know, and then you can hear from them. What we need to do is create positive environments. We need to invest more in sports and make them accessible, whether it is swimming or team sport. I know there has been some debate in terms of what to do when two sets of rights of two different groups sometimes clash. For example, some women were concerned at school, if you are a Muslim girl and a trans boy is in the changing room or in the team, or a trans woman if you are an adult, what do you do then? Because you have competing rights that might then prevent her from participating. My beneficiaries are Muslim women, so I would consider that if they are not included or they cannot feel that they can be included, then they are missing out on being integrated. It is quite complicated. Swimming is another example—swimming classes. You have to look at it from school all the way to whether women are doing professional sports, whether it is for fitness or for leisure; you just have to try to remove as many barriers to participation as possible. That is what I would say.

Schools and organisations need to talk to those groups of women and understand some of the issues?

Yes, just to see what their needs are and what needs to happen. Allia gave the example of swimming and that you could see inside. I have noticed at one of my local gyms that I go to, they have suddenly put something up so you cannot look inside. Some things can be really simple solutions, actually.

I have a quick question on sport, and it follows on from Shaista’s brilliant examples there of what we do really well, and actually we do not champion enough and do not learn from best practice. I represent Luton North, and there are some fantastic initiatives going on there and particularly inside mosques. If people have not been inside a mosque, they will not know that there are self-defence classes, there are often gyms, there are a lot of women’s exercise classes that happen and take place in those. How do we get that message out more? Active Luton also runs so many women-only swimming sessions, and it is as simple as just putting up a blind. There is just this cheap blind in Lewsey Swimming Pool that they just roll up and roll down. Sometimes it is down for a lot longer because everybody feels a bit more comfortable with not being watched, and they roll it up for the children’s sessions instead. There is more that we could do to promote those best practices that you have highlighted. As was highlighted there, even down to the uniform that people wear, what would work best for a Muslim woman might work best for all women. Luton Women and Girls Cricket Club surveyed its team, which is hugely diverse. There are women wearing hijab, there are women wearing niqab, they all play, and they were all asked what colour they wanted, and none of them wanted white. No woman wants to wear white playing any sport. They wear this really cool black and gold, and they have kept that, and it is amazing, but it is just as simple as asking what they want. I wondered what we could do to better promote those examples of best practice, and to exemplify them really. Is there anything that we could do, Allia? I am just going to come to you on that one.

I do not even live in Luton and I know how great it is because it is that word of mouth within our community. I went to a Scout session yesterday, and they were talking about how great Luton was, the Muslim Scouts group. Within our own communities, we do a lot of telling each other. Also important is speaking about them here and celebrating places like Sisterhood FC, which is an all-hijabi football team. Investing in them, and then for instance when we got the opportunity to be on This Girl Can, which is a national campaign, having that public imagination of putting people not just in Birmingham, but across the country. To see a person in the club fencing, that is incredible, or for everyone to hear about Luton’s cricket club. How do we change the public imagination of what sports people look like? The Olympics were an opportunity for lots of people to talk about that, and Sport England is quite good at talking about and promoting what it means to be a person of all different faiths, races, and genders in sports, and how do we make them more inclusive.

Muslim Heritage Month website; I have actually just set up a DEI good practice page. I have added the Crystal Palace and the Cricket Board examples on there, and the idea is to put DEI good practice that companies can then highlight and boast about, not just in sport, across anything that they are doing that is inclusive to Muslims. I am hoping to populate that.

That would be brilliant, and if we can encourage people to share their examples of good practice that would be great because we can all learn from one another. There is a huge drop-off in participation in sport for all girls when they get to teenage years. Now when I go to primary schools in Luton, all the girls, and Muslim girls, are so competitive, right? They all want to be footballers or cricketers, there is a handful of them who want to play other kinds of sport, but when they get to their teenage years they drop off. Are we seeing a bigger drop-off in Muslim girls, and what is the reason for that, do you think?

Yes, according to Sport England’s Active Lives surveys, the girls from minority backgrounds, including Muslim girls, have the lowest participation rates compared to their white counterparts. We often talk about it in terms of whether there is access to it, and actually in schools they often do not invest in girls’ sports and creative spaces for girls. It is about investment in schools. There are loads of great organisations like Girls Active. If we have more PE teachers who are also women, who are also encouraging these unusual sports like fencing or archery, and if we have more funding in those kinds of sports but also sport spaces outside the school. There is a big drop-off rate for our clubs in the evenings during winter. There is obviously a reason why: girls want to get home. Everyone wants to get home before it is dark, but specifically if you have worries about being a girl in the dark. Where are the spaces that feel brightly lit and safe for me to do sports? If there were more youth clubs then great, there would be more access to sports.

You could actually tell them the benefits of continuing. Apparently, research shows that if you do competitive sport when you are younger, particularly team sport, you are more likely to excel in leadership positions. Research apparently shows that. If we highlight the benefits to them, it is not just the health and fitness, it will help your career, that would help.

That would really help sell it to parents to be supportive as well.

Exactly.

Just one final point, and can I just say thank you to you all, and Irene, for sharing your experiences and your data? It is really, really valuable. I attended an event last year for an organisation called the Women’s Faith Forum, and at that event a colleague shared how some Sikh girls felt a bit too afraid to go into schools with their turbans following the race riots this summer. I wanted to know, are you also collecting and getting data around other minority groups who might be facing a knock-on effect of the rise in Islamophobia, particularly following events of the summer? From your experience, does it also have an effect on other communities?

The answer is yes. Even in this report, there was a small number of participants who were not Muslim, and they said, “Well, it’s impacting us because people think that we’re Muslim.” We had an online meeting in November, and there is this one lady who is Christian, but she wears a headdress and traditional African clothing. She said, “I get regularly mistaken for a Muslim.” Yes, they get abuse as well. People are looking at appearance. Whether you are Sikh or whether you are this African Christian lady, you are being racialised.

The first victim of hate crime after the 9/11 terrorist attack was a Sikh man who was perceived to be Muslim. I have done research with Professor Imran Awan on mistaken Muslimness, especially men who are targeted for Islamophobia, but they are not real Muslims. Typically, Sikh and Hindu men are targeted as perceived Muslims for Islamophobia because of mistaken identity. We see that it has ripple effects not only for real Muslims, but also those perceived Muslims, both men and women. That is why if we go back to the APPG definition of Islamophobia being a form of anti-Muslim racism in relation to perceived or real Muslimness, that demonstrates the visibility of Islam, not only for real Muslims but also those perceived to be Muslims.

Does anyone else have any other questions at all for our panel?

Thank you for being a brilliant panel. I was scared, but you were not scary.

No, we have always worked as a Committee that tries to get the most out, so that we can have the best informed report. I have two last questions before you go, before you say thank you and that we have all been kind. Just a quick one, and that is about the reporting hubs. I know that we want them to be culturally sensitive reporting hubs, but there are communities within communities, and I wondered how diverse and localised you would expect or think that a really effective local reporting hub would be? Should it be centred around the Muslim community that it is serving, or should you have more generic reporting hubs that are very culturally sensitive and aware generally? Which one do you think would be more effective?

That is a complicated question because you could have something in the community but not very niche and small. It could be an organisation that is new, or it could be an established one that has a reach. You need them regionally: one in Yorkshire, one in Greater Manchester, one in the West Midlands, where the largest Muslim communities are, potentially. Also, you need to look at women’s centres. Now we are thinking as a national Muslim women’s charity, we should probably have a national in tandem helpline—a separate one, because the data we collect is different—because people naturally are coming to us anyway; they know about us, as an example. You have to look at the credibility and the reach of the organisation, and are they going to that organisation? For example, I do not know, Bangladeshis may not want to go to a Somali organisation. I was speaking to somebody from Redbridge yesterday, and she said that the communities there are so diverse but if you have that one organisation, regardless of what ethnic background that organisation is from, if they have a good relationship with the others, that one could be it. It probably needs a bit of research and the tendering process needs to be opened up, it cannot just go to one organisation.

The last question from me is, we live in a globalised world, we are not immune to anything that happens outside, and actually vice versa. How do you think our standing in the world is affected by the level of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hatred in this country? Close to my heart, a lot of my family live in Malaysia, my mum is from Malaysia, and when Malaysia issued a travel warning to the UK following the riots, it was quite a big deal. Are we in danger of missing out on really talented Muslim women coming to this country, in sectors such as health, business, investment, and education? Are we missing out potentially, because of our reputation of not getting this right?

I remember after the riots I ended up doing lots of international media, which was unusual, but everybody was watching us. We have had UN committee reports on the rights of children and on racism, which have been highly critical of the way that Muslims are portrayed in the media, how the rights of children are affected by counter-terrorism policies like Prevent, and for good reason. We should be ashamed, and we should be self-critical, and we should take that criticism on board, and actually have a hard look at what kind of society we are building.

We need to look at the fact that we have a new Government now, and lots of people in the survey commended the police response and government response. Now the Government need to build on that response. Some comments that people had made to us were, “Thank goodness that the previous Government were not in power while these riots were happening, because they could have completely mishandled the response.” We can build on that.

Does anyone else have anything to add? No? Thank you to all the panel, and both Natalie and Alex texted me to say although they had to leave early, they were really grateful for your contributions, and for all your information and answers today.