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We mustn't allow Muslims in public life to be silenced
Even in polite society, fear-mongering, negative stereotyping and abuse are now out of control – as I know from bitter experience
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Mehdi Hasan
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 8 July 2012 21.00 BS

Have you ever been called an Islamist? How about a jihadist or a terrorist? Extremist, maybe? Welcome to my world. It's pretty depressing. Every morning, I take a deep breath and then go online to discover what new insult or smear has been thrown in my direction. Whether it's tweets, blogposts or comment threads, the abuse is as relentless as it is vicious.

You might think I'd have become used to it by now. Well, I haven't. When I started writing for a living, I never imagined I'd be the victim of such personal, such Islamophobic, attacks, on a near-daily basis. On joining the New Statesman in 2009, I was promptly subjected to an online smear campaign, involving a series of selectively edited videos of speeches I'd delivered in front of groups of Muslim university students several years ago. I was accused of being a "secret" member of the extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, and a "dangerous Muslim shithead" in the "same genre" as the Nazis. The post that sticks in my mind is from the blogger who referred to me as a "moderate cockroach" whose Islamic faith was "no different from the Islam of Abu Hamza, Abu Qatada, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Anjem Choudary or any of the 'tiny minority' of Islamic terrorists who believe that Islam must dominate, no matter what the cost".

Three years later, as I leave the New Statesman to join the Huffington Post UK, little seems to have changed. "Huffington Post's new UK political director brings pro-Iran baggage," screamed the headline on the Fox News website back in late May. My "baggage"? I once publicly praised a fatwa from Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, forbidding the production of nuclear weapons. Shame on me! Another ultra-conservative US news website, the Washington Free Beacon, referred to me as the "HuffPo's house jihadi".

The mere mention of the words "Islam" or "Muslim" generates astonishing levels of hysteria and hate on the web. As one of only two Muslim columnists in the mainstream media – the other being the Independent's Yasmin Alibhai-Brown – I have the dubious distinction of being on the receiving end of much of it. In August 2011, for instance, I wrote a light-hearted column in the Guardian on Ramadan, examining how Muslim athletes cope with fasting while competing. The article provoked an astonishing 957 comments, the vast majority of which were malicious, belligerent or both. As one perplexed commenter observed: "There is much we might criticise Islam for … but to see the amount of hatred being spewed on this thread on an article about something as innocuous as fasting really makes one wonder." Indeed.

And it isn't just pieces about Muslims. A recent interview of mine with the shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, elicited the following response: "Get out of my country, goatfucker." How many other political columnists have to deal with such "feedback"? And how many of my fellow pundits in the British media get death threats in the post, warning them that "there will not be 1 live Muslim left in Europe when we have finished"?

From my perspective, the British commentariat can be divided into three groups. The first consists of a handful of journalists who regularly speak out against the rising tide of anti-Muslim bigotry – from the Telegraph's Peter Oborne to a bevy of Guardian columnists, including Jonathan Freedland, Seumas Milne and Gary Younge.

The second consists of those writers, such as the Mail's Melanie Phillips, the Telegraph's Charles Moore and the Spectator's Douglas Murray, who see Islam and Muslims as alien, hostile and threatening. Phillips has referred darkly to a "fifth column in our midst"; Murray has said "conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board".

But it is the third, and perhaps biggest, group that concerns me most: those commentators who boast otherwise impeccable anti-racist credentials yet tend to be silent on the subject of Islamophobia; journalists who cannot bring themselves to recognise, let alone condemn, the growing prevalence of anti-Muslim feeling across Europe – or acknowledge the simple fact that the targeting of a powerless, brown-skinned minority is indeed a form of racism.

Muslim pride and wider prejudice
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guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 11 July 2012 21.00 BST

Of course I was aware of the intolerable levels of anti-Muslim sentiment in the UK, as any sentient person should be, but I was still deeply shocked to read Mehdi Hasan's account of how much abuse he receives almost daily as a Muslim mainstream columnist. It would be appalling if the all too numerous bigots succeeded in driving Mehdi out, and I applaud his determination not to let that happen (We mustn't allow Muslims in public life to be silenced, 9 July). I have always liked Mehdi's writings and his engaging, irreverent personality whenever I've seen him on television, but his personal experiences open up a matter of wider principle. We should all make a commitment to social solidarity with people from all backgrounds and all faiths, as an essential component of the modernising project urgently required by the current general crisis across Europe and beyond. Mehdi asks: "Who's with me?" to which I emphatically reply: "I am."
Giles Oakley
London

• My first thought on reading Mehdi Hasan's words was welcome to the club. Working-class people, especially those receiving welfare benefits, have been increasingly vilified under both New Labour and now the Tory-led-coalition. Hardly a day passes without a mainstream politician or media gofer using the most inflammatory language to attack the unemployed, sick and disabled. Unlike most trolls who anonymously post obscene comments attacking Medhi's work, they have no fear of using their own names, as they are supported by powerful vested interests in the UK, whether political, economic or media. The consequence of this dripping poison has left the British working class all but excluded from public life. Middle-class Muslims like Mehdi may take a bit of stick from internet trolls, but at least they gain access to the system. A working-class youngster, whether from Bradford or Basildon, would be lucky to get into the door of parliament.
Mick Hall
Grays, Essex

Online racist abuse: we've all suffered it too
Mehdi Hasan revealed the Islamophobic abuse he's endured online. It's something all racial minority writers face
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Inayat Bunglawala, Huma Qureshi, Simon Woolley, Nadiya Takolia and Bim Adewunmi
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 11 July 2012 15

Since I started writing on Cif back in 2006, I have regularly seen what can only be described as McCarthy-style online witchhunts against those Muslims who raise their heads publicly to criticise government policies, including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Usually, very little attempt is made to engage with the actual arguments. Instead, the focus is often on derailing the discussion with remarks like: "Yeah, but why did your paedophile Prophet marry Aisha?" Or "What do you think about gays being hanged in Iran?"

When, on my blog, I highlighted the story of a drunken man in New York who'd entered a mosque and urinated on prayer mats, one commenter wrote: "If muslims continue their policies of raping and pimping out underage indigenous girls, as well as sheltering, facilitating, and acting as apologists for terrorists upset with the foreign of the British Government. In fact, if the muslim brotherhood and affiliates continue to operate in the UK I suspect Muslims in the British Isles will look back on the days when all the natives did was piss on them as the 'good' olde days."

And when I wrote a positive story of a Pakistan hotel cleaner who'd handed in $50,000 in cash he'd found in a room, "Alexander" wrote: "the true face of pakiland is the cleansing of Hindu and Sikh minorities since 1948, and the on going deceptions practiced by pakistanis, not some fluff peice about an honest man. Exception to the rule... There is a lamppost and noose waiting for every jihadi that comes back to Britain and their scum enablers and sympathizers. If you can't see that coming you're a delusional idiot. Then again, to believe that that lying arab pervert mohammed was a prophet of God you have to be delusional."

The "war on terror" has helped foster an atmosphere where bigotry against Muslims is often seen to be less offensive than that expressed against other minority groups. And in the thuggish (and usually drunken) shape of the English Defence League, we now have a street movement more than intent on exploiting that bigotry.

日本・日本人に向けられた発言をイギリスに返すとすると、

イギリスにより強力な反差別法を。

イギリス人には人権概念がないのか！！

イギリス人はディベートの仕方をしらないのか？！

と言いたくなる。