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LONDON: The “gap is closing” between online Islamophobia and real-life hate incidents in the UK, the CEO of the government’s new Muslim community partner group has warned. 

It comes amid growing concerns over a rise in Islamophobia in the country, and as the British Muslim Trust launches a government-supported hotline for reporting hate crimes, The Guardian reported on Friday.

Anti-Muslim hatred in real life is “underreported and unrecognized,” Akeela Ahmed warned. Incidents can occur in day-to-day life, she said, highlighting one case where she was refused service in a shop while wearing a hijab.

She added: “It’s something I experienced myself ... People around me were being served but I wasn’t served.

“First you feel helpless, and then you second guess yourself … sort of gaslight yourself into thinking that it must have been something that you did wrong. (But) basically there wasn’t anybody else who looked like me in the shop.”

In July, the BMT was picked as a recipient of the government’s “combating hate against Muslims fund.”

In the months since, Ahmed has toured Muslim communities across Britain, encountering “fatigue” and feelings of “disconnection from central government.”

Part of the BMT’s mission is to research the impact of Islamophobic discourse on Muslims in the UK.

The group will “call on ministers if research showed social media companies are not being held to account” under existing legislation, Ahmed said.

“We’re not even just talking about content that could be racist or anti-Muslim in nature. We’re talking about content that is inciting violence, that is actually breaking the law.

“We would not be asking for any special favours or special measures just for Muslim communities. This is literally about upholding the law as it is and enacting it.”

Ahmed added: “I think Muslims are an easy target because they are visible. People like me who wear a hijab. Pretty much everywhere that we visited, people described feeling like they were experiencing levels of hate that their parents had experienced in the 70s and the 80s.

“And they expressed how they felt that whereas the older generations might have just been like ‘we’re going keep our heads down, we’re going to prove our worth, get on with our lives, not make a fuss’ — they felt that they were a different generation and they were doing all the right things.”

The UK government is considering a new legal definition of Islamophobia that is expected to “protect the freedom to criticize Islam” while combating surging anti-Muslim hate incidents.

LONDON: European visa systems in the Schengen area are prohibitively strict for human rights figures seeking to enter the continent from impoverished and dangerous parts of the world, Amnesty International has said.

In a report, the organization called on Schenghen states to close the obstacles to rights and values that they claim to uphold.

The report identified 104 visa-restricted countries — mainly in South Asia, Africa and the Middle East — where human rights figures face substantial difficulty in accessing short-term European visas.

The applicants intend to travel to the 29 Schengen states in Europe for advocacy, networking, or to flee danger in their home countries, Amnesty said.

But through Schengen policies, they face “indirect discrimination” and are racialized as Black, Asian and Muslim, resulting in negative impacts on their mobility.

Erika Guevara Rosas, senior director for research, advocacy, policy and campaigns at Amnesty, said: “The inability to access Schengen visas means that the voices and testimonies of human rights defenders from countries in the Global South are excluded from forums where decisions that deeply affect their lives are made.

“While Schengen states are entitled to decide who enters their territory, the impact of their visa systems on human rights defenders from 104 countries represents a clear disconnect between what they have committed to, through their guidelines and other commitments to protect human rights defenders, and what they actually do.”

Amnesty identified key barriers to entry for applicants seeking visas from the 104 countries. The first is deciding where to submit a visa application; many Schengen states lack diplomatic representations or agreements with the visa-restricted countries, meaning applicants must travel abroad to file their documents, the organization said.

Supporting documents also present another hurdle, as many applicants are from marginalized groups and lack the appropriate financial and employment statements, Amnesty added.

Schengen states can turn to the revised version of the EU Visa Handbook, published by the European Commission last year, for welcome changes to visa policy, Amnesty said.

The updated guidelines include practical examples of how Schengen states can aid visa applications by human rights figures.

The handbook should be “well disseminated and fully implemented,” including among visa officers outside Europe, the organization said.

Amnesty also called for the creation of a fast-track visa system designed for human rights activists outside Europe.

Rosas said: “Ensuring that human rights defenders have access to short-stay Schengen visas in a reliable, predictable, transparent and timely manner is indispensable to realize their right to defend rights without discrimination.”

In its report, Amnesty spoke to 42 international organizations, within and outside Europe, which have facilitated the journeys of hundreds of human rights figures to the Schengen area.

It also gathered testimonies from 32 human rights activists with firsthand experience of European visa processes.