When Is the Time to Hate? A Research Review on the Impact of Dramatic Events on Islamophobia and Islamophobic Hate Crimes in Europe

This article examines the indirect impacts of hate crimes on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender and Muslim communities in the United Kingdom. Based on 34 qualitative interviews, we explore both the perceived meaning of ‘community’ in the context of targeted victimization and the emotional and behavioural effects that anti-lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender and Islamophobic hate crimes have on other members of the victim’s group. Building on previous quantitative data undertaken as part of a larger programme of research, this study helps to explain how and why hate crimes have significant indirect consequences on two distinct but commonly targeted communities. The focus on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender and Muslim communities allowed us to draw out similarities and commonalities across different groups, further enhancing the understanding of the impacts of hate crime. In particular, the article highlights how for many lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender and Muslim people feelings of anger and anxiety about hate crimes were linked to enhanced levels of empathy towards those that they share a group identity with. These empathic bonds often gave rise to a sense of ‘shared suffering’, with participants frequently feeling connected to group members worldwide through their common experiences of hate and prejudice. Although group identity was important to many participants’ sense of belonging to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender or Muslim communities, it was clear that the most profound impacts of hate crime were experienced when incidents occurred within someone’s local area. This highlighted the importance of location as a key variable in understanding both the meaning of ‘community’ and the indirect impacts of hate crime.

Jihadi Attacks, Media and Local Hate Crime

This article focuses on individuals suspected of hate crimes with xenophobic, Islamophobic, and homophobic motives. The objective is to fill a gap in the knowledge left by existing research, which has primarily focused on victims and definitional problems. This article's genuine contribution to new research is the comparative perspective and the study of co-offending and specialization in offences for persons suspected for hate crimes. To find persons suspected for hate crimes, register data relating to hate-crime-motivated assault and unlawful threats/molestation offences from 2006 have been used. The study is based on a total of 1,910 offence reports together with information from the Registers of Suspected and Convicted Offenders for 558 persons suspected for hate crimes. Xenophobic hate crimes are over-represented in the material by comparison with homophobic and Islamophobic hate crimes. In the reports that have information about the relation between victim and perpetrators, it is more common for the perpetrators to be known than unknown to the victims. In cases where a suspected person has been identified, males are in a clear majority. Those suspected of homophobic hate crimes have the lowest mean age. Only a small number of offence reports include information on suspected co-offenders. Fifty-five per cent of the suspected people have prior registered convictions. It is very uncommon for them to be specialized in violent offences or unlawful threats/molestation, however. It is not possible to generalize the results to perpetrators of hate crimes, because 70% of the offence reports did not have information of suspected persons.

Hate/bias crime against racial/ethnic minorities in the United States: A systematic review of empirical research and assessment of next steps

Prior research has explored victim blaming in the context of hate, often depicting hate crime victims as relatively passive recipients of harassment and violence. In reality, victims often do engage with their perpetrators, and the present research explored the effect that victim behavior might have on observer reactions to Islamophobic hate crimes. Participants completed a measure of Islamophobia and read a scenario in which a White man verbally harassed a victim in the park before physically assaulting him. We manipulated both the victim's identity (White or South Asian Muslim) and the victim's response to the perpetrator's verbal harassment (the victim either ignored the offensive comments, verbally reacted to them, or became physically confrontational). When the victim was portrayed as passive and nonresponding, the South Asian Muslim victim attracted lower victim blame, higher perpetrator blame, and increased certainty that the offense was a hate crime. As the victim's behavior became more aggressive, victim blaming increased and perpetrator blaming decreased, but only for the South Asian Muslim victim. It appeared that observers scrutinized the behavior of the South Asian Muslim victim in a way they did not for the White victim, such that sympathy toward the Muslim hate crime victim was tied to his "good behavior." We propose that observers hold expectations of the model hate crime victim, one who is a racialized, religious, or sexual minority who accepts harassment passively and with good behavior; deviation from this script results in a loss of sympathy and an increase in victim blaming. Finally, those higher in Islamophobia displayed reduced perpetrator blame, guilt, and sentences but greater victim blame when the crime targeted a South Asian Muslim as opposed to White victim.

Islamophobic hate crime continues to be a significant social problem throughout the United Kingdom. It is now well established that hate crimes can cause heightened levels of anger, fear and anxiety amongst those who are directly targeted. However, it has largely been assumed that such incidents have negative emotional and social impacts on other members of the victim’s community. Using a large scale survey, this chapter will provide the first quantitative examination of the indirect (community) impacts of hate crimes on members of UK Muslim communities. The study found that simply knowing a victim of an Islamophobic hate crime can have emotional and behavioural effects that are comparable with those who have experienced direct forms of victimisation. This indirect experience was found to increase other group members’ perceptions of threat and their feelings of anger and anxiety. In addition, they were more likely to report avoidant and security-related behavioural intentions and hold negative attitudes towards the Government and certain criminal justice agencies. However, not all impacts were intrinsically negative to community wellbeing. Indirect victimisation was also found to have a mobilising effect on Muslim communities, with many individuals likely to experience enhanced ties to their community and a strengthening of their Muslim identity.

Existing research on Islamophobic hate crime has examined in detail the verbal, physical and emotional attacks against Muslims. However, the experiences of non-Muslim men who suffer Islamophobic hate crime because they look Muslim remain ‘invisible’ in both official statistics and empirical research. Drawing on data from qualitative interviews with 20 non-Muslim men based in the United Kingdom, we examined their lived experiences of Islamophobic hate crime. Interviews were transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis. A deductive approach to thematic analysis was adopted to analyse participants’ narratives, and six overarching themes were developed: (1) nature of Islamophobic hate crime; (2) triggers of Islamophobic hate crime; (3) impact of Islamophobic hate crime; (4) reporting incidents, responses and barriers to Islamophobic hate; (5) victims’ coping strategies; and (6) recommendations on tackling the problem. Our findings show that participants experienced Islamophobic hate crime because of ‘trigger’ events, namely the Brexit vote, Donald Trump’s presidency and ISIS-inspired terrorist attacks in European countries such as France, Germany, Sweden and the UK. Participants described being verbally and physically attacked, threatened and harassed as well as their property being damaged. The impacts upon victims included physical, emotional, psychological and economic damage. These experiences were also damaging to community cohesion and led to polarization between different communities in the UK.

This chapter looks at the reasons the law enforcement response to hate crimes has been largely ineffective and the impact this has on the capacity for researchers to accurately measure hate crime. The chapter begins by looking at the magnitude of evidence of law enforcement underreporting. Moreover, the burgeoning number of police agencies that voluntarily participate in the UCR Hate Crime Statistics program is contrasted against the negligible increase in police reported hate crimes over the three decades of the program. The chapter reviews the sequential steps involved in reporting beginning with the victim’s decision to report and the first responding police officer’s inclination and ability to accurate classify hate crimes. Explanations for law enforcement underreporting including the inability to accurate classify hate crimes at the moment of the criminal incident are covered. Lastly, chapter 8 reviews research that found that police agencies with written hate crime enforcement and reporting policies and formal hate crime training are more likely to report hate crimes.

The decentralized nature of American policing largely allows agencies to define crime, and the requisite severity of that crime, at the institutional level. As a result, local hate crime statistics are differentially constructed across space. The current research posits that official hate crime statistics most accurately reflect a rate-producing, rather than a behavior-producing, process. Focusing on anti-Muslim hate crime, a particularly understudied form of hate crime, we examine reporting differences across community factors, using the media reports as a comparison point. We analyze official FBI hate crime reports, and news reports collected by Mapping Islamophobia, employing a logistic regression to predict anti-Muslim hate crime reporting. Our findings suggest significant variation in the social construction of anti-Muslim hate crime, both across institutions and across space.

Recent years have witnessed an increase in highly publicized attacks targeting members of ethnoracial and religious minority groups. To date, existing research has primarily focused on the tendency for such "trigger events" to generate violent aftershocks. We argue that beyond such ripple effects, highly salient trigger events significantly increase hate-crime related stress among racial and ethnic minorities. Additionally, we explore whether these effects are limited to the group most clearly targeted, or if they "spill over" to other minoritized communities. To study reactions to hate crimes, we draw upon national survey data (N = 1,122) in combination with a natural experiment involving the Unite the Right rally and vehicle attack in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017. We employ an "unexpected event during survey" design to estimate the causal effect of the Charlottesville rally on stress about hate crimes. We first show that there was an increase in anti-Black hate crimes in the 2 weeks following the Charlottesville incident. We also find a corresponding increase in stress due to the perception of personal vulnerability to hate crimes among African-Americans. However, we do not observe a significant increase in levels of stress following the trigger event among Hispanics and Asian Americans. Our results suggest that highly publicized instances of intergroup violence can have significant impacts on stress about hate crime victimization within the target group. However, we find that this effect is short-lived, and that both violent aftershocks and the general climate of fear spurred by hate crimes may be racially bounded.

Chapter 6 - Securitization of migration and hate crimes toward immigrants and refugees

This is one of the first student resources dedicated to the subject of Islamophobia and Islamophobic hate crime by drawing upon real-life examples, case studies and Home Office official data. Follo...

Islamophobic hate crimes have increased significantly following the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and 7/7. More recently, the rhetoric surrounding Trump’s election and presidency, Brexit, the rise of far-right groups and ISIS-inspired terrorist attacks worldwide have promoted a climate where Islamophobia and anti-Muslim sentiments have become ‘legitimised’. The Routledge International Handbook of Islamophobia provides a comprehensive single-volume collection of key readings in Islamophobia. Consisting of 32 chapters accessibly written by scholars, policy makers and practitioners, it seeks to examine the nature, extent, implications of, and responses to Islamophobic hate crime both nationally and internationally. This volume will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as postdoctoral researchers interested in fields such as Criminology, Victimology, Sociology, Social Policy, Religious Studies, Law and related Social Sciences subjects. It will also appeal to scholars, policy makers and practitioners working in and around the areas of Islamophobic hate crimes.

Traditionally, the literature has sought to understand the impact of racial minority status and trauma as it relates to interpersonal violence, domestic violence, and sexual assault. What has not been as extensively reviewed and summarized is how racially or ethnically motivated hate crimes impact the mental health of minorities—particularly Latinx/Hispanic groups. This review aims to summarize the current body of literature on the intersection of race-motivated hate crime and trauma responses within Latinx community. To do so, the theoretical foundation for this inquiry will build from a race-based trauma perspective. Specifically, this review connects existing frameworks for race and trauma and integrates literature that examines Latinx or Hispanic populations that have experienced discrimination, bias, or hate crime as a result of their identity or perceived identity. The importance of situating bias or hate events within the trauma literature stems from a lack of overall formal evaluation of these events, and how these occurrences are historically overlooked as a traumatic stressor. The findings of this review suggest that (1) experiencing racially motivated victimization can cause adverse mental and physical health outcomes in Latinxs and (2) currently, there is only one study that has examined the impact of hate crime on Latinxs in the United States. This leaves the field with unanswered questions about the impact of hate crime victimization among Latinxs, which is an ever-growing area in need of attention.

Expand and ContractE-Learning Shapes the World in Cyprus and in California Nancy Strow Sheley (bio) and Carol Zitzer-Comfort (bio) In the spring of 2008, university students enrolled in courses at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB), and the University of Cyprus (UCY) participated in a cross-cultural e-learning project in which they studied American Indian literature and history. All students followed the same six-week syllabus, which included shared readings and films. These common texts became the basis for dialogue via online discussion boards as students struggled to explain causes of prejudice, ethnic conflict, racial hatred, and genocidal acts. Their interactions and reactions with these materials brought to light the many guises of historical and contemporary cultural conflict and suffering: dominant groups marking Indigenous peoples for extinction, film and literature depicting such groups as prematurely “extinct,” religious factions often being responsible for past and present horrors, and societies and institutions perpetuating hatred through focusing on skewed histories. For American students, stories of American Indians and genocide deepened implications of their country’s history and exposed untold truths. Students in California, whose knowledge of American Indian history was nearly as nonexistent as that of their Cypriot peers, were appalled at the historical facts of forced sterilization of Native women, of Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) boarding schools, of extermination by smallpox, and of the US policies of “Kill the Indian, Save the Man”—all of these issues illustrated in reading materials and in the documentary The Canary Effect (2007). For students [End Page 71] in Cyprus, studying US policies that led to the persecution of American Indians not only gave them a more enlightened view of American history but also illuminated their own country’s past acts of genocide. In their analyses of these same materials, the Cypriots began to compare the historical mistreatment of American Indians to their own country’s “problem”—a thirty-five-year division between cultures, marred by wars, isolationist politics, prejudice, and fear—known worldwide as “the Cyprus Problem.” This project thus facilitated the expanding of students’ learning as their learning crossed national boundaries while encouraging them to also focus on their own country’s lesser-known histories. Background This international classroom and subject exchange project was developed after Professor Nancy Strow Sheley received a Fulbright Award to teach American Studies at UCY in Nicosia, Cyprus, in the spring of 2008. Her proposed course was titled “The Conflicted American Dream: Multiple Perspectives, Critical Views.” Also that spring, Professor Carol Zitzer-Comfort was scheduled to teach “American Ethnic Writers” at CSULB and planned to emphasize protest literature. We developed a six-week shared unit, digitally connecting UCY students with those at CSULB, in order to have students read the same materials, respond to the same prompts, watch the same visual media, and correspond online, via the Discussion Board (Black Board). As the project planning evolved, the following guiding questions emerged to frame teaching and research: • How can American Indian literature (film, popular culture, ideas) be used to examine cultural conflict and how such conflicts are maintained? How does protest literature focus on the issues, and when does it become effective in addressing conflict? • What similarities can be found among (a) the cultural divisions in America that result in the “conflicted” American dream, (b) the treatment of American Indian peoples past and present in [End Page 72] America, and (c) the social, cultural, political, and ethnic divides that currently exist in Cyprus? • How does digital technology inform pedagogical choices for this project? • How will two different cultural groups respond to the historical genocide and subsequent “survivance” of American Indian groups? • Does proximity to the issues of Native Americans, among students in the United States and Cyprus, suggest more empathy for the human situation, or can students a world apart find examples closer to home to relate to human suffering caused by political decisions? • Specifically, will Cyprus students allude to “the Cyprus Problem” and the divided country in their responses about cultural injustices, prejudice, and alienation? • How will the analyses of the issues surrounding Native American genocide and subjugation relate to major themes in the course: How is history written as “truth,” who writes it...