The New Nation - Internet Edition

Researchers looking at the way British Muslims are represented by the media say they have found that most coverage is negative in tone.

A Cardiff University team behind the study looked at nearly 1,000 newspaper articles from the past eight years.

Two-thirds focused on terrorism or cultural differences, and much of it used words such as militancy, radicalism and fundamentalist.

The research was commissioned by Channel Four's Dispatches.

Dr Paul Mason, a member of the team, said the team looked at three areas.

They carried out a statistical analysis looking at types of stories and the way Muslims were described and the language used, the photographs used alongside the stories and they analysed the types of case studies used.

He said: "We looked at both nouns and adjectives and the way in which British Muslims were described.

91% of the articles about Muslims were found to be negative

"And we found the highest proportion of nouns used were about things like extremism, suicide bombers, militancy, radicalism - which accounted for over 35% of the adjectives used about British Muslims - fanatic, fundamentalist - those kinds of languages were used.

"And Islam was portrayed or constructed in the language as dangerous or backward or as a threat," he said.

The team found that since the attacks of 11 September 2001 in the United States and 7 July 2005 in London there had been an increase in stories about British Muslims and this peaked to more than 4,000 in 2006.

'Perceived threat'

Mr Mason added: "What you have to be careful of here is to watch the kind of generalisation of the very, very small number of people that are involved in political violence of any kind and the generalisation about Islam which is carried out by the newspapers.

"So following 9/11 and 7/7 of course there is a perceived threat from the public and the public are concerned about political violence.

"But it is wholly wrong to make what the newspapers do in the generalisation of those who carry out public violence to the whole of Islam and the whole of the British Muslim community."

He said there were concerns that journalists and editors may have sought to appeal to their own readership about some perceived threat to British unity or values.

"You get these inaccurate stories about this threat of there is going to be more mosques than churches, which is a complete nonsense.

"There are roughly 900 mosques and there are 42,000 churches, so this is a ridiculous report."

The Channel Four documentary, It Shouldn't Happen To A Muslim, investigated whether the 7/7 London bombings and the fear of terrorism had fuelled a rise in violence, intolerance and hatred against British Muslims.

Muslims 'under siege like Jews'

A government minister has warned that many British Muslims "feel like the Jews of Europe".

Dewsbury MP Shahid Malik, who is a minister for international development, stressed that he was not equating the Muslims' situation with the Holocaust.

But, in an interview to mark the 7 July bombings anniversary, he suggested that many Muslims felt "under siege".

This had the effect of segregating society and undermining efforts to deal with extremism and terrorism, he said.

Mr Malik, who revealed he had been the victim of religious hatred himself, made the comments in an interview for a Channel 4 Dispatches programme.

He said: "I think most people would agree that if you ask Muslims today what do they feel like, they feel like the Jews of Europe. "I don't mean to equate that with the Holocaust but in the way that it was legitimate almost - and still is in some parts - to target Jews, many Muslims would say that we feel the exact same way.

"Somehow there's a message out there that it's OK to target people as long as it's Muslims.

"And you don't have to worry about the facts, and people will turn a blind eye."

David Brown, from the Jewish Life Education Centre, said he did see some parallels between the persecution of Jews in the 20th Century and the contemporary treatment of Muslims.

"If you think about the earlier stages of what was going on in Europe in the later (19)20s and early (19)30s and the way that Jews were scapegoated and stereotyped, I can certainly understand a sentiment of that is going on for the Muslim community," he said.

The documentary - which investigates whether the fear of terrorism has fuelled a rise of violence, intolerance and hatred against British Muslims - will be broadcast on Monday to coincide with the third anniversary of the 7 July London bombings.

Mr Malik's constituency in West Yorkshire was home to 7 July suicide bomber Mohammad Siddique Khan.

The MP, who told how his car was firebombed, a car drove at him in a petrol station and said he receives regular hate mail, called for action to be taken to help Muslims feel accepted in society.

"It is critical we ensure that Britain's near two million Muslims have a sense of belonging and feel accepted, first and foremost because it is their right as British citizens, but secondly because it is vital in the fight against violent extremism in the name of Islam," he said.

"With some 2,000 people under surveillance because of the possibility that they might engage in terrorism the threat of an attack is a very real one and Muslims in communities up and down the country become indispensable in the fight against terrorism.

"Yet there is no doubt that many Muslims feel under siege in the media and in society and this siege mentality feeds into a wider victim narrative."

Mr Malik said the apparent persecution made it more difficult for people in positions of responsibility to persuade people to challenge the "small minority of extremists who call themselves Muslims".

(Source: BBC)