Hope not Hate reports today on what looks like a constructive new initiative, Tell MAMA, roughly the equivalent of the Community Security Trust – and in fact the CST has provided Tell MAMA with support and advice based on its own experience of tackling hate crime.
One of the issues the CST has to handle with care is the fuzzy dividing line between fair criticism of Israel and antisemitism. It seems very scrupulous about policing this divide, explaining its methodology in some detail.
For Tell MAMA, the parallel problem is probably going to be associated with the final concern they list here: anti-muslim literature. (Note – they don’t seem to use the term ‘Islamophobic’.)
I’d be surprised if they start pouncing on Jesus and Mo as an example – but inevitably there will be marginal cases in which MAMA will be seen to set the bar too low or too high. But the bulk of their work will, presumably be spent monitoring and supporting cases such as these:
“I started wearing the hijab at university in 2006 but last summer I decided to take it off because I didn’t feel safe after someone tried to pull it off my head, said Alisha, a student from Middlesbrough.
She and her husband were targeted because they were Muslim, she believes.
“I started to get panic attacks. I never thought I’d feel like this, but everyone is so afraid.”
Her husband was also attacked on his way to work.
“He was verbally abused, called a ‘Paki’, ‘terrorist’, and he was spat on. When he confronted the men, security guards tried to arrest him until an old man pointed out who the attackers were,” she said.
Another victim, Usman Choudhry, an IT manager in Salford, said he has suffered at least one incident of abuse per week over the last five to six years. “I haven’t reported it to the police,” he said, “because I am not sure they could have caught the offenders.”
As Hope not Hate observes, an organisation such as this is long overdue.
