Born and bred in the UK of Indian parents, Sonia (not her real name) was a typical young British woman enjoying a western, urban lifestyle in a city centre apartment. She took her PGCE and started teaching at her local college, where one of her biggest hurdles was getting used to the broad local accents of her students. But she had also always been interested in different faiths. She began to explore the Qu’ran, got deeper into Islam and eventually decided to become a Muslim herself . . . not an easy thing to do as it was heavily frowned upon in the British Indian community she had grown up in.
“I converted during my second year of teaching,” says Sonia. “I didn’t tell anyone at college because I was afraid of people’s reactions if I suddenly turned up wearing a hijab. I feared being seen as an extremist, as someone radicalised. I think a couple of colleagues would have been understanding, but not so with people from my Indian background. I was also living in a predominantly white area with one of the highest quotas of English Defence League members. I decided to leave my job and then start afresh elsewhere. It also fitted in with starting a family.”
Nothing, though, could have prepared her for her first day wearing a hijab in public. “I was immediately very nervous and self-conscious, something I’d never felt before in my life. I felt like everyone was staring at me; it was not a comfortable feeling and I felt very vulnerable. The worst thing happened when I was going up an escalator. A white British woman behind me must have assumed I didn’t speak English because she quite audibly muttered ‘They are f****** everywhere, aren’t they? They’re like cockroaches. Why don’t they just go back to the country they came from?’ I froze and said nothing. I was terrified and literally shaking. I’d been living in that town for five years and had never come across any type of racism. I just went home and cried my eyes out.
“Only now with hindsight can I think of the audacity of that woman to assume and say the things she did. I am a lecturer in English and have been born and bred here. The only thing that makes me different is that I’ve chosen to cover my hair and body. And for that, I am now being called a cockroach. It’s totally shocking!”
Islamophobia Awareness Month (IAM) this November aims to create awareness and recognition of islamophobia as a hate crime. Now in its ninth year, the campaign was co-founded by MEND (Muslim Engagement and Development) with other UK organisations to deconstruct and challenge the stereotypes about Islam and Muslims portrayed by many media organisations and misperceptions perpetrated on social media. Government religious hate crime figures show Muslim believers as the UK faith group most affected during 2020-21 with 2,703 recorded incidents, followed by Jewish (1,288) and Christian believers (521).
Sonia’s anxiety is nothing new among Muslims, according to Aman Alim from MEND. In one recent awareness-raising event, Aman explains how scared young hijab-wearing Muslim women were before entering a large city centre to give away roses to strangers to break down stereotypes. But brave it out they did, and their gesture was warmly welcomed by the public. “I think that’s so important,” says Aman. “What we’re showcasing is that goodness exists in people across all faiths and walks of life, regardless of race or religion. We are counteracting negativity in the press and social media.
“It doesn’t matter if people are not necessarily close friends, but we need to show kindness to each other at every single opportunity - those are the universal values that most of us hold dear in this country and they should be celebrated more.”
This month sees a wide range of nationwide events taking place across industrial, community and educational settings that in past years has included City and Islington College, Blackburn College and Cadbury College Birmingham. IAM, run mainly by volunteers, promotes equality in the workplace and awareness of the part played by the Muslim community in the UK’s past and present, such as in the large number of NHS doctors or leading sports stars like Amir Khan, Moeen Ali and Mo Farah. A number of colleges have hosted IAM’s full-scale DIY exhibition (which highlights contributions made by Muslims in the U) and have also hosted IAM’s Islamophobia Causes and Cures workshops.
But besides such input from external organisations like MEND, what positive steps can individual colleges and other institutions take to increase mutual understanding and respect among their own staff for colleagues’ different beliefs and traditions? One approach is the reverse mentoring scheme launched last year by Leyton Sixth Form College, an institution serving a community with a large Muslim population in an area where Islamophobia is a growing issue, though not at the college, says principal Gill Burbridge.
“Senior leaders and mentors were mentored by often junior staff members from an ethnic minority background - the nine-month scheme that mainly finished last May is part of our antiracism strategy and is still ongoing. My mentor is a young female support staff member who has told me how she once underwent excessive scrutiny while she was fasting during Ramadan from a work colleague who was not just curious but questioning in a critical way. “She says it was almost like she was being asked: ‘Why on earth would you do that sort of thing?’ It made her feel very uncomfortable. She found it intrusive, undermining and a challenge to her cultural identity and faith - it was not a direct form of Islamophobia but more low-level.
“She also explained how being young, female, Muslim and from an ethnic minority background made workplace culture in previous jobs more difficult for her - such as visiting the pub with colleagues on a Friday evening. She felt excluded because she didn’t want to or was unable to take part in that activity. Yet going for a drink after work is also an important aspect of other people’s identity. The question is how do we manage this situation?” Gill says the program has really helped senior leaders and managers understand multiple perspectives and challenge certain assumptions and ways of thinking. “Hearing people’s own stories and testimonies was really powerful. You realise there are so many versions of the Muslim faith; believers may take part in a common fast but be very different in ethnic and cultural identity.”
In the programme, staff were split into 10 mentor/mentee pairs to share experiences without fear of judgement or consequence. The training was interspersed every week with a confidential 60- to 90-minute one-to-one chat session between mentor and mentee. The mentor set the agenda, inviting Gill to read things to understand her mentor’s cultural identity better.
“Despite massive differences in our positions at college, we found we had so much in common,” says Gill. “I was able to ask her questions and highlight issues and challenges I was facing and how I as college principal managed this really complex and deeply entrenched set of contexts.
“Each pair proposed an experiment that would make a positive difference to the college; ours was about relationships between teachers and support staff because my mentor said they often felt regarded as second-class citizens. Teachers then met support staff to get to know them and now when they pass each other in college, they stop, say hello and chat rather than just walking past.
Another pair’s proposal focused on minority ethnic students preparing for a university setting very different to Leyton where they would not be surrounded by people who looked talked like them. It was a programme of empowerment that equipped the students to positively challenge a situation where they might feel they were being treated unfairly or prejudicially.
Leyton Sixth Form College works closely with the Association of Colleges’s director of diversity, Jeff Greenidge, who says the AoC is only too aware of inequalities within FE. “We need more urgent, concerted work to ensure an inclusive environment, better diversity, and equality of opportunity throughout all we do.
By widening the diversity of FE leadership and governance - and increasing BAME leadership, playing fields will be levelled, he says. “Islamophobia, as with all discrimination, has its roots in learned behaviour and bias and often stems from fear and misunderstanding of a group or an individual.” The answer, Jeff says, is to “build strong relationships with young people, be willing to learn from them and provide them with opportunities to question the status quo”.
AoCJobs, part of the Association of Colleges, connects teachers and support staff with schools and colleges for online job opportunities.
