Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SAMA (Spaces of Anti-Muslim Acts in the Greater Paris and Greater London regions)

Teaser

The SAMA (Spaces of Anti-Muslim Acts) project focuses on people who are discriminated against because of their real or perceived religious faith, and its main goal is to show the impact of persistent Islamophobic incidents on spaces and people. This project is important and...

Summary

The SAMA (Spaces of Anti-Muslim Acts) project focuses on people who are discriminated against because of their real or perceived religious faith, and its main goal is to show the impact of persistent Islamophobic incidents on spaces and people. This project is important and innovative because over several years Islamophobic incidents have been increasing, and in the academic world there are few studies about the geography of Islamophobia. As geographers, we wanted to show that Islamophobia could also be read spatially, and that anti-Muslim acts may occur in some spaces and not in others. Indeed, everyday public spaces are significant when it comes to experiences of anti-Muslim discrimination as the hostility directed at Muslim communities in many European countries tends to manifest itself in busy public spaces such as in transport hubs and close to religious building. We focus on Paris and London because they are two European countries which reported a large number of Muslim populations and a high rate of Islamophobic acts. The unprecendented rise of Islamophobic acts, for example just after the Charlie Hebdo attack or the London Bridge attack, shows that Islamophobia is a growing concern, and therefore the comparison between Paris and London is very relevant. By analyzing the spatial effects of Islamophobia, we seek to assess the impacts of anti-Muslim discrimination in France and the United Kingdom. Through the SAMA project, we identify the spaces where anti-Muslim acts happen, the spatial practices and the scales of belonging of those who are discriminated against, and how markers of social difference such as gender, race, age and class intersect with religion in experiences of Islamophobia.

Work performed

Dr Najib collected quantitative geo-referenced data in order to map the phenomenon of Islamophobia. The goal was to map where Islamophobic incidents have occurred. The two maps for Paris and London have been exposed in a media article (in two versions: one in French and one in English) in ‘The Conversation’. The mapping of anti-Muslim acts in the two capital cities highlights specific distributions showing visually the importance of the urban centre for the Parisian case and the transport axes for the London case. In France, Islamophobic acts occur in great majority in public institutions (which can draw a more centralized geography of Islamophobia), while in the UK it happens mostly in public areas and public transport (which can highlight important vertical and horizontal axes).
These two maps have also been exposed in an article entitled ‘Where does Islamophobia take place and who is involved? Reflection from Paris and London’ submitted by Dr Najib and Professor Hopkins to a special issue of Social and Cultural Geography on ‘Geographies of Islamophobia’ co-edited by Dr Kawtar Najib and Dr Carmen Teeple Hopkins. This special issue is based on organised sessions at the Association of American Geographers 2017 in Boston, and brings together a range of international contributors (established scholars as well as early career researchers) whose research engages with Islamophobia in different contexts (e.g. Europe, United States, and Australia).
Second, Dr Najib has collected qualitative data on spatial and behavioural practices and strategies adopted by victims of Islamophobia. Dr Najib conducted 33 interviews with French victims present in the CCIF database, and 27 interviews with British victims present in the MEND database. These interviews allowed us to collect important data on how victims use spaces, how they avoid certain places, how they change or conceal their religious habits and practices in certain places. Dr Najib and Professor Hopkins have written an article entitled ‘Veiled Muslim women’s spatial and behavioural strategies in response to Islamophobia in Paris’ which presents the qualitative data stemming from the interviews conducted in Paris. This article is a result of an oral presentation that Dr Najib gave the 1st September 2017 at the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers session on “Muslim Women’s Geography”. The organizers asked Dr Najib to participate in their special issue on “Negotiating Muslimness” for Political Geography.
As for the results of qualitative data in Paris and London, the first findings were presented in a conference hold at Berkeley University in April 2018, and Dr Najib and Professor Hopkins plan to write various articles based on the set of 60 interviews conducted in Paris and London.
Finally, Dr Najib has submitted a single-authored article showing the link between spaces of Islamophobia and spaces of inequality in Paris for Population, Space and Place. The goal of this article is to observe whether the real geography of Islamophobia and the perceived geography of Islamophobia match or contrast. For the Parisian case, it is interesting to note how real and perceived geographies of Islamophobia match. Indeed, the quantitative data of the CCIF show that Central Paris is the area most affected by Islamophobic acts within the Greater Paris region, and the qualitative data show that veiled Muslim women in Paris do not feel comfortable in Paris intra-muros. Indeed, the majority of them feels “out of place” in the Parisian centre.

Final results

With the findings of the SAMA project, Dr Najib tries to challenge notably the French policy in link with the 2004 law which bans the headscarf in public schools and foster in a certain way such institutionalized discrimination. And she also tries to challenge the British society which is based on the multicultural model and does not necessarily foster the mixing between the different communities; that is why we can see that anti-Muslim acts happens mostly in zones of contact in the UK. Finally, Islamophobia shows a clear impact on everyday spaces but also on people’s everyday lives, especially with veiled Muslim women who are forced to reinvent new mobility and behaviours in response to Islamophobia.
The SAMA project had a direct impact on the work of the CCIF. It allowed them to improve their methodology (in terms of collecting the information from the victims and taking additional criteria into account in their database) and gain a better understanding of the information collected by the CCIF through victim support and case management. Moreover, Dr Najib was able to help the CCIF to improve their ethical protocol in terms of data access with different partners since the Ethics of the SAMA project follows the ethical requirements of Newcastle University endorsed by the European Commission. The SAMA project also allowed different CCIF’s partners such as journalists, MPs and commentators to take a new look at Islamophobia, not only from an NGO and anti-racist perspective, but also from an academic and public policy one. All these different actors who work on Islamophobia contribute to raise awareness of this phenomenon, and may have a direct impact on the changes of the individuals’ behaviours and representations (public opinion, victims, perpetrators…). Dr Najib’s research was included in the 2017 and 2018 annual report, which received very positive feedback for its contribution. Her work received several questions during and after the press conference where the report was launched. Since then, the reports have been printed and distributed in 500+ copies, have been downloaded 2600+ times and shared on social networks massively.

Website & more info

More info: https://research.ncl.ac.uk/sama/.