UK Council for Internet Safety Disregards Online Anti-Muslim Hate

The Government recently set up an Executive Board of the UK Council for Internet Safety (UKCIS).

The work of the Board is to look at online safety issues and have the ability to represent the impact of harms, as well as the ability to mobilise a response to online harms. As part of that process, you would expect that the Board would want representation from organisations working daily to ensure the safety of Black and Minority Ethnic communities, such as Muslim communities. Given the large rise in anti-Muslim hate which Tell MAMA has been documenting over the last 6 years and online risks to Muslim communities, you would assume that this would be an area that the Board would want represented. Instead, it has included a single voice from the Independent Advisory Board on Hate Crime, covering all strands. This is not good enough.

Once again, we are seeing a displacement of the concerns of BAME communities, in this case, Muslim communities, which are being relegated at a time when the far right are actively targeting Muslim communities online. The Department for Media Culture and Sports, much like the Department for Education, has relegated anti-Muslim hate to the bounds of peripheral work, as though the country is still stuck in 2008, when a decade later, fear within Muslim communities and hate crimes specifically against this set of communities has risen sharply.

Muslim communities frankly deserve better and the Department for Culture, Media and Sports and the UKCIS in particular, need an urgent rethink on this , if not a wake up call. It is, frankly, a disgrace.

The post UK Council for Internet Safety Disregards Online Anti-Muslim Hate appeared first on TELL MAMA.

Categories: anti-Muslim hate, hate crime, IAG, Independent Advisory Group, News, Opinions, UKCIS