Most UK news coverage of Muslims is negative, major study finds

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Most coverage of Muslims in British news outlets has a negative slant, according to a major analysis by the Muslim Council of Britain, which concludes that news stories in the mainstream media are contributing to Islamophobia.

The study found the Mail on Sunday had the most negative coverage of Islam, with 78% of its stories featuring Muslims having negative themes – above an already-high industry average of 59%.

The New Statesman, Observer and Guardian were the least likely to portray Muslims in a negative light, according to the analysis of 11,000 articles and news broadcasts during the final three months of last year.

The findings come amid growing scrutiny of Islamophobia in the Conservative party and whether its roots lie in rightwing media coverage. A YouGov poll of Tory members by the campaign group Hope Not Hate found that 60% believe “Islam is generally a threat to western civilisation” and more than half believe “Islam is generally a threat to the British way of life”.

Miqdaad Versi of the Muslim Council of Britain said he did not want to stop news outlets reporting on negative stories about Muslims but asked journalists to ensure that they considered the tone of their coverage. He also encouraged news outlets to include more positive stories about Muslims and not simply focus on terrorists and extremists.

“You need to ensure that when you write a negative story it is fair and reflective and doesn’t generalise about all Muslims and feed into a broader far-right narrative,” he said. “In addition to that there’s an issue of standing back and looking at all the stories out there and seeing if we’re reflecting all the stories. Are we only covering the worst Muslims out there?”


https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/jul/09/most-uk-news-coverage-of-Muslims-is-negative-major-study-finds?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=twt_gu&utm_medium=&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1562653114


I think he needs to realise that Muslim community are not doing enough to counter the rising number of extremist Muslims within their communities. There is not going to be countless stories about extremists, if there is less extremists and terrorists. You simple cannot ignore stories, of terrorism and extremism.

Not sure how else thes can be written and yet to see the media write . Where they are basically blaming Muslims as a whole. I simple do not buy that assertion from this study. In fact they often make a clear distinction bewteen Muslims and extremist Muslims. Just as we do with then speaking about extreme left and right. So I would say its the actions of Muslim extremist that is contributing to anti-Muslim bigotry, which is wrong. As no Muslims should receive hate based off the actions of extremists. Obviously the Far right capitalise on what extremists do on this to promote hate against Muslims, which is also wrong and needs to be countered.

phildidge wrote:

phildidge wrote:

Avoided my question

Hastag...TommyforUndemocraticvalues

They are also not advocating for media silence

Now answer my question

Still waiting Tommy

Since when does one group (with an agenda) or another group (with a different agenda), get to control the free media/press in this country, and to dictate what news they can/can't report on...!?


I am actually staggered by the claims of these MCB cretins, in the OP... because the media/press already bend over backwards to downplay (and even completely ignore) stories of serious crime/terrorism by Muslims... while they also keep pushing the bullshit narrative that "it's nothing to do with islam" waffle... as well as already putting out plenty of "pro Muslim" propaganda stories...!!!

Tommy Monk wrote:

phildidge wrote:


Still waiting Tommy

Since when does one group (with an agenda) or another group (with a different agenda), get to control the free media/press in this country, and to dictate what news they can/can't report on...!?


I am actually staggered by the claims of these MCB creations in the OP... because the media/press already bend over backwards to downplay (and even completely ignore) stories of serious crime/terrorism by Muslims... while they also keep pushing the bullshit narrative that "it's nothing to do with islam" waffle... as well as already putting out plenty of "pro Muslim" propaganda stories...!!!

1. No relevance and whataboutism. 

2. I disagree that all media bend over backwards, some do, but some do not. Again irrelevant to the question. asked.

I already made my points clear in the beginning.

I even stated that their view around how anti-Muslim bigotry spreads is basically ignoring the mass of Islamic extremism and how the Far right capitalise on this to spread fear of Muslims

They never advocated to silence the media and yet you claim they did.

That was poor and wrong by you

So you clearly do not want to admit you were mistaken here, so little point further discussing with you

Waffle...

Tommy Monk wrote:

phildidge wrote:

phildidge wrote:

Avoided my question

Hastag...TommyforUndemocraticvalues

They are also not advocating for media silence

Now answer my question

Still waiting Tommy

Since when does one group (with an agenda) or another group (with a different agenda), get to control the free media/press in this country, and to dictate what news they can/can't report on...!?


I am actually staggered by the claims of these MCB cretins, in the OP... because the media/press already bend over backwards to downplay (and even completely ignore) stories of serious crime/terrorism by Muslims... while they also keep pushing the bullshit narrative that "it's nothing to do with islam" waffle... as well as already putting out plenty of "pro Muslim" propaganda stories...!!!

Don't these groups, just like everyone else, have the right to criticize the media and to call upon it to do what they think would be a better job?

Ben Reilly wrote:

Tommy Monk wrote:


Since when does one group (with an agenda) or another group (with a different agenda), get to control the free media/press in this country, and to dictate what news they can/can't report on...!?


I am actually staggered by the claims of these MCB cretins, in the OP... because the media/press already bend over backwards to downplay (and even completely ignore) stories of serious crime/terrorism by Muslims... while they also keep pushing the bullshit narrative that "it's nothing to do with islam" waffle... as well as already putting out plenty of "pro Muslim" propaganda stories...!!!

Don't these groups, just like everyone else, have the right to criticize the media and to call upon it to do what they think would be a better job?

If the news media/press are already reporting the truth, and are already free to do so... then that is already the best way...!


If there is any group who wishes to prevent this... then it is them who are the problem!

Have you ever wondered why there are so few moderate Muslim voices in the press? It’s not because they don’t exist. There are over a billion of us in the world. In many cases, it’s because of the way we are treated by hardliners. Once again, they have trained their crosshairs on me, this time charging me with ‘misrepresenting Muslim behaviour and belief’ and ‘negating the belief of some Muslims’. If a Muslim speaks up against political Islam – questioning the legitimacy of these self-appointed spokesmen – this is what we can expect.

Just look at this week’s report by a group called the Centre for Media Monitoring, which claims that ‘Islamophobia’ is on the march in Britain. In making its case, the group cites one of my Spectator articles in which I defended Boris Johnson’s right to criticise the burqa (a garment which, unlike Boris, I do not think has any place in a tolerant society, nor a basis in Islam).

The Centre for Media Monitoring claims that my column – and The Spectator itself – is guilty of ‘misrepresenting Muslim behaviour’. But what exactly is this body? The group’s own report admits it is part of the Muslim Council of Britain, a highly-politicised organisation. But actually the link is closer than that: its founder and executive director is also the official mouthpiece of the Muslim Council of Britain.

Unsurprisingly, the report has major flaws. It claims from the start that ‘Islamophobia is real’ but doesn’t properly define the term. It’s true that bigotry against Muslims exists, just as it does towards dozens of other groups. But the use of Islamophobia is intended to cover something much broader than that: namely to smear any criticism of Muslims and Islam as motivated by bigotry.

This isn’t just disingenuous; it’s dangerous. As I’ve written before, Islamophobia is an ambiguous term which serves to portray diaspora Muslims as a besieged minority. This explains the term’s popularity with Islamists and their sympathisers, who seek to magnify Muslims’ sense of victimhood in the very societies where our rights are afforded the greatest personal agency: the West.

The term Islamophobia is also used to silence discussion on issues like the niqab – despite the fact that its use is hotly debated by Muslims around the world. Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria have all passed various laws opposing the wearing of garments like the burqa and niqab. These bans are often motivated by security concerns, but they also make it clear that face-covering is not a central practice in Islam. These nations see the niqab as deeply divisive, not only in Western societies, but in their own Muslim-majority societies too.

But rather than argue its case, groups like the Muslim Council of Britain seek to shut down debate altogether. By painting arguments like mine as bigoted and beyond-the-pale, they aim to wrest control of the conversation in favour of another view: that Muslims are perennially demonised and objectified by the very same societies, and media outlets, which allow us to freely express our views.

I don’t agree with everything in The Spectator but I’m grateful for the platform it gives me to examine complex and sensitive topics around Islam – and to do so in the face of intense disagreement from both Muslims and non-Muslims alike. For an organisation like the MCB to accuse The Spectator of bigotry is indefensible.

Accusations of Islamophobia leave little space for individual believers to challenge the differences between Islamism and Islam, or the diversity within Islam itself. And for non-Muslims? Their exclusion from the debate becomes absolute when any criticism is likely to be labelled “racist Islamophobia”.

The views of the MCB don’t come from a political party or even its alleged links with the Muslim Brotherhood. Instead, these views merely reflect the rise of identity politics in secular liberal democracies. Today, victimhood is valued above all else.

But Muslims who indulge in such identity politics should be aware that these views certainly didn’t exist in the time of the Prophet himself. Even as the Prophet and his early followers faced intense persecution, they didn’t claim victimhood. What’s more, with little historical experience of martyrdom within Islam – explained, in part, by the religion’s meteoric expansion and its rapid ascent to dominance until the peak of Islam’s ‘Golden Age’ – being Muslim had never been equated to victimhood until Islamism arrived in Egypt in the 1920s and soon after brought it to post-war Europe.

Bassam Tibi, an influential Muslim scholar of Islamism, has written that when compared to violent jihadists, non-violent Islamists can be wrongly seen as moderate and progressive (when, in fact, they can be just as corrosive to society and its values).

Think, for example, of mainstream Western support for Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood-allied government in Egypt, which was only overthrown by enraged Egyptians when Morsi’s Islamist ambitions became clear. Tibi also notes the influence of Islamism in shaping how most of the world sees Islam, particularly among non-Muslims. Back in 2013, he warned that failing to confront this monopolisation of the discourse would give Islamism ‘a standing it does not deserve’.

He isn’t wrong. In fact, Islamist groups have made it one of their central aims to discount the value of civil and pluralist Muslim groups. Part of this has been the fantastically successful duping of tolerant, secular, liberal democracies into believing that Islamists are a vulnerable and marginalised religious minority, instead of the totalitarian theocrats they really are.

It’s why pluralist Muslims like me – who argue that true Islam must be authentically tolerant and that anti-democratic supremacist Islamist beliefs are at profound odds with the teachings of the Prophet – are seen as such a threat.

Given the track record of the Muslim Council of Britain, it’s laughable that any projects affiliated to it should be taken seriously on issues like bias, prejudice, discrimination and tolerance. Look how the Council has acted towards Ahmadi Muslims, pacifist Muslims who now face persecution in Britain at the hands of other Muslims, as well as further afield (notably in Pakistan, where they are persecuted by lethal, deeply unjust blasphemy laws).

Shortly after the 2016 sectarian murder of Asad Shah, an Ahmadi Muslim who lived in Glasgow, leaflets saying that Ahmadis should face death if they refuse to convert to mainstream Islam, were found in Stockwell Green mosque in south London. The leaflets were written by the once-leader of the notorious ‘Khatam-e-Nabuwwat’ movement. The organisation is notorious in Pakistan for calling for the genocide of Ahmadi Muslims.

The Muslim Council of Britain subsequently ‘suspended’ its affiliation with the mosque to examine the matter. But in a statement put out days before, the MCB published a position statement appearing to negate the right of Ahmadis to affiliate with the MCB. ‘Given this fundamental theological difference with the Ahmadi community, the MCB is not in a position to represent or be represented by the Ahmadi community,’ the statement said.

The Centre for Media Monitoring would be better named the Centre for Controlling the Narrative of Islam. Its mission is arguably not to combat bias, xenophobia or even the misappropriated use of the term Islamophobia, but instead to lay sole claim to the narrative of both Islam and Muslims in Britain, and silence Muslims like me.

So if the MCB is worried about publications which give liberal Muslims a voice – and publications which are not afraid to scrutinise the menace of Islamism – then they have chosen the right target. The Spectator remains one of the few places where this bid to chill discourse, control the narrative and eliminate nuance is robustly challenged. It may well become increasingly difficult to speak out. But I for one refuse to be cowed.


https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/07/what-does-the-Muslim-council-of-britain-have-against-Muslims-like-me/