Challenging Anti-Muslim Racism in Scotland

There has been significant media attention on hate crime against Muslims in
Scotland following the racist Brexit campaign and the terrorist attacks in London and
Manchester. Many suggest that the solution to hate crime is greater education. I
argue education alone will not be effective; we must also challenge the state
structures that produce and reproduce racism. To do this, we need to understand
how the state itself has historically used racism within its own laws, structures and
discourses to divide populations.
Racism and Empire Based on Scientific Racism
Scientific racism produced a hierarchy of “races” based on physical and cultural traits
such as skin colour, the shape and size of skull, all used to determine the
intelligence and cultural capacity of such “races”. The idea of race was developed
from the Eighteenth Century and then used to justify slavery, Empire and
colonialism. The occupation and violence the British (English and Scots) inflicted on
the colonies was primarily for economic profit and the achievement of political and
military power. Ideas of race and racism however did not stay in the colonies; it was
embedded within the British education system.
The 1870 Elementary Education Act brought schooling for all children aged 5 to 18.
The books used in schools were written at the height of empire and glorified the
power and importance of Britain in the world, presenting white Anglo-Saxon’s as the
superior race. Children were taught to be obedient, proud and to always defend the
British empire and their way of life (Virdee, 2014). These same books were used in
Scottish schools too. This creation and spread of racist attitudes based on the
superiority of the white British man was demonstrated by “racist riots” which took
place in 1919 in Britain’s main sea ports including Glasgow where Black and Asian
men were employed as seaman. All because white men returning from the First
World War came back to find that they couldn’t get jobs because they had been
replaced by people who they thought were inferior and not even British.
Post-War Immigration
People in the ex-colonies were encouraged to settle in Britain after the second world
war primarily because Britain needed their labour. They nevertheless experienced
widespread and violent racism. Though Enoch Powell’s “Rivers of Blood” speech in
1968 was widely criticised, the government, only three years later in 1971 passed an
immigration act which stopped all primary immigration of Black and brown people by
placing a requirement on migration which stated that only those who could prove that
they had two generations of family connection to Britain could settle here.
Australians, Americans etc could easily prove that connection whereas Africans and
Asians could not. Thus, racism was once again embedded within state structures
and laws, this time justified by the argument that having too many “coloureds”
increases racism, thereby blaming the presence of migrants for the hostility they
faced.

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A Problem of Culture
The discrediting of scientific racism resulted in racism being expressed in terms of
cultural differences. So how is this still racist? Hostility towards “other cultures” is
presented as natural, and the mixing of cultures as unnatural – culture becomes
naturalised just as race was, moreover racism is perceived to be a natural reaction to
the mixing of cultures which suggests there is a hierarchy of cultures too (Balibar,
1991). Such a theory of race based on cultural difference allows for the denial of
racism. People like Nigel Farage and the far right in general violently deny their
racism just as Enoch Powell did; instead they argue that cultural diversity is not
desirable or normal.
This strategy was cleverly used by Margaret Thatcher in 1978 to build support for
tightening up immigration controls for spouses, she said that “the British people were
worried that ‘this country might be rather swamped by people with a different
culture”. It was quite clear that it was only the cultures of Black and brown people
which was perceived to be problematic.
Racism expressed in cultural terms gives it flexibility to change as required. The
Rushdie affair, 9/11 and 7/7 resulted in the racialisation of Islam and Muslims.
Racism expressed in cultural terms is very flexible and allows the inclusion of
religion. This is why the statement, “we can’t be racist against Muslims because
they’re not a race” is consequently a bogus argument.

The Dehumanisation of Muslims

The Rushdie Affair enabled the state and the media to label Muslims as a backward
and violent people who burned books and were religious zealots. The attacks on
the Twin Towers in 2001 was used to justify the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq
because it was easier to justify wars with people if they are first defined as less than
human.
Whilst 9/11 was used to justify foreign policy interventions, and specifically wars
against Muslim countries, the 7/7 terrorist attacks carried out in London, because
they were carried out by Muslims born and bred in the UK, resulted in the re-
formulation of state counterterrorism policies focussing on British born Muslims.
They were underpinned by two explanations for the causes of terrorism, the first, that
Islam was a violent religion and that all Muslims were potential terrorists, the second,
that extremism was a result of a distortion of Islam and that an effective strategy
would be to separate the “moderate” Muslim from the potential terrorist (Kundnani
2014). Consequently, policy interventions targeted all Muslims, illustrated by the
Trojan Horse hoax and the installation of CCTV camera’s in Muslim neighbourhoods
in Birmingham. Muslims are required to give up their cultures and assimilate by
accepting a set of undefined “British Values” and a “British way of life. Additionally,
any visible signs of Muslimness are viewed with suspicion.

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The demands for Muslims to shed their Muslimness has been accompanied by a
continually evolving dehumanising project which takes advantage of current events
and criminalise sections of the Muslim community as the recent sexual grooming
scandals have done, resulting in the “paedophile” label being applied collectively to
all Muslim men creating an amplified racist narrative. This was at the expense of less
attention being paid at the failures of Social Work Services listening to the voices
and suffering of the young vulnerable victims who had repeatedly reported the
abuse.
Racism in Scotland
Many of the areas discussed in this article such as migration, immigration and
counterterrorism are reserved matters and so are not devolved to the Scottish
Parliament. It is nevertheless important to note that although the policies are
produced at a UK level, implementation takes place at a Scottish level, for example
police cells have been used to detain asylum seekers. The Counterterrorism and
Security Act 2015 requires public bodies such as health services, education
services, prison Services, Police and local authorities (all of which are devolved to
Scotland), to coordinate the implementation of the Prevent Strategy. Scottish
Government as well as some Scottish Public bodies have produced their own
Prevent strategies and action plans. When terrorist attacks happen in England or
politicians stoke up racism this results in an increase in racist attacks in Scotland.
The SNP’s civic nationalist discourse which promises full acceptance to all migrants
in return for loyalty to Scotland has further contributed to the myth that there is little
or no racism in Scotland (Davidson et al 2018). This myth is believed by the vast
majority of white Scots yet it has a massive impact on Black and brown Scots too.
Nasar Meer’s study on experiences of racism and discrimination of Muslims in
Scotland found a massive discrepancy between experiences of racial discrimination
and reporting of cases which can be explained by race functioning as an “absent
present” (in Davidson et al 2018). In other words, racism is so very part of everyday
life that it is “simultaneously absent and present” due to its normalisation in everyday
life.
Conclusion
Anti-Muslim hate crime cannot be fully understood or challenged without
appreciating that it is a form of racism and that racisms change depending on time
and context. So paraphrasing Stuart Hall, we must accept that there is no one
racism but several racisms. The racialisation of Islam and Muslims is relatively
recent and a result of geopolitical events at both home and abroad. This article has
shown how the British state and its institutions have embedded racism within their
own policies and discourses in order to pursue a political agenda both in the UK and
in its foreign policy interventions.

Key texts used to source the information used in this article include

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Balibar, E (1991) Is there a Neo-Racism? in Balibar, E, Wallerstein, (I991), Race,
Nation , Class; Ambiguous Identities, Verso Books
Davidson, N, Linpaa, M, Mcbride, M and Virdee, S (2018) No Problem Here;
Understanding Racism in Scotland, Luath Press.
Kundnani, A (2014) The Muslims Are Coming: Islamophobia, Extremism and the
Domestic War on terror, Verso Books
Virdee, S (2014) Racism, Class and the Racialised Outsider , Palgrave McMillan

Smina Akhtar is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology, University of

Glasgow