SOUTHHALL BLACK SISTERS
Dear Members of the Women and Equalities Committee,
Re: Session on Gendered Islamophobia
Please see below a written submission that we would like the Committee to consider as part of the session on ‘gendered Islamophobia’ on Wednesday 15th January 2025. Please note that this was written within a short time frame and we would appreciate the opportunity to address the Committee on these concerns. In our submission, partly due to the constraints of time and partly in the knowledge that our perspective on this issue will be underrepresented, we have chosen to focus on the ways in which the framing of anti-Muslim racism as Islamophobia closes down legitimate critiques of religion which impacts on women and LGBT rights and freethought and expression. We also point to the overlapping ways in which racism affects both Muslim women and other Black and minoritised women to conclude that an exclusive focus on Muslim women does not do justice to either group.
About us
Southall Black Sisters was formed in 1979, at the height of the anti-racist struggle against fascist marches across the UK and the everyday reality of racist attacks. We continue to challenge racist violence and immigration controls and other state policies that question our right to live in the UK. We set up a not-for-profit, secular and inclusive organisation to meet the
needs of Black (Asian and African-Caribbean) women to highlight and challenge all forms of gender-related violence against women, empower them to gain more control over their lives; live without fear of violence and assert their human rights to justice, equality and freedom. We have supported women to challenge all aspects of the intersection of racism, sexism and poverty.
In 2024, Southall Black Sisters expanded its support services, providing critical support to 5,472 callers through our national helpline and over 800 women through direct funded projects. Our dedicated team has worked tirelessly to offer legal advice, counselling, and emergency accommodation, ensuring that each woman receives the holistic wraparound support she needs to rebuild her life.
One Law for All was launched on 10 December 2008, International Human Rights Day, to call on the UK Government to recognise that Sharia and religious courts are arbitrary and discriminatory against women and children in particular and that citizenship and human rights are non-negotiable. The Campaign aimed to end Sharia and all religious courts on the basis that they work against, and not for, equality and human rights. One Law for All promotes secularism and the separation of religion from the state, education, law and public policy as a minimum precondition for the respect of women’s rights.
The international and local context
Developments in the UK in relation to the term ‘Islamophobia’ cannot be fully understood without reference to the international context. The coming to power of Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran marks the moment of the rise of pan-Islamism, forces which have been privileged, funded and promoted by the US, a foreign policy which has been described as McJihad (Mitchell, 2017)1 in its attempt to contain the perceived threat of communism as we have seen in Afghanistan and across the Middle-East. This unleashed Islamic fundamentalism which sought to establish an ‘anti-imperialist’ hegemony in the name of religion through acts of terrorism around the world, mainly in Muslim majority countries but also in the West (e.g. 9/11 and 7/7).
This severely and adversely impacted the Muslim communities in countries where the brutal War on Terror launched by Western governments, has provided an additional justification and fillip to racist and anti-immigrant sentiments and narratives, the context of all non-white
communities in post-colonial Britain.
The rise of Islamic fundamentalism globally, in particular, (although all religions have been heading towards fundamentalism) and a growing hostility towards migrants, has provided domestic far-right and racist groups the pretext to sharpen their rhetoric and attacks on Muslims and specifically in terms of their religion. Patterns of violence against Sikhs wearing turbans, however, have shown that fascists on the street are rarely able to distinguish between Muslims and other minorities that wear head coverings.
The experience of heightened racism and sophisticated fundamentalist mobilisations lies behind the increased assertion of religious identities, a response that has in turn benefited the growth of religious fundamentalism. We have felt the impact of these locally as minoritised communities have turned to the Right, pushing out important histories of secularism and ushering in new waves of religious conservatism and fundamentalism that seek to police women and children and subject them to greater mechanisms of control. In this encounter between the far-right and besieged Muslim communities, valid critiques of religion (as crushing women’s rights and the rights of sexual minorities) have been sidelined and dismissed as another manifestation of ‘Islamophobia’
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