The recent summary of the evidence on Muslims in Britain collected by the Muslim Council of Britain provides a welcome insight into reality of life in the UK for Muslims, and the prejudice they face.

It is clear that there is a significant level of inequality for Muslims in Britain, and policymakers must do more to support British Muslims in the labour market, including in better translating their increasing educational attainment into economic success.

The report findings also confirm that Islamophobia is a particular form of racism, and we must continue to fight its manifestation, whether abuse on streets and buses, racist comments in the media, or being a refused a job by an employer.

Runnymede produced a report on Islamophobia in 1997, and it remains one of our most widely read and important publications. The distinctions offered in that report between open and closed views of Islam and most of its analysis remain true today.

We argue that Islamophobia is related to other forms of racism, both empirically and conceptually. Therefore the response to it – whether in terms of social mobilisation or policy design – must build on a wider anti-discrimination or anti-racist platform. This is not only a question of joining with those fighting again anti-Semitism, as we did last month in a conference on anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim racisms, but also with other groups, including black people, Asian people and indeed the many white British people who reject racism and would like to see more done to eliminate ethnic inequalities.

British Muslims generally do not have any difficultly affirming ‘British values’, nor do they experience much difficulty in identifying with Britain. The findings from the Census are unequivocal on this point, and further resonate with previous studies by EMBES, Ipsos-Mori, British Social Attitudes and British Future. This suggests that our conceptual framing, but also our mobilisation and policy demands, should focus more on discrimination, inequality and prejudice than on identity or culture.

Further research that might build on this excellent summary report on Census data includes looking into the demographic features of Muslims in Britain, namely that two-thirds are of South Asian descent – that is from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. More research can now be done to understand this issue better. For example, we can now examine the experience of Arabs particularly, and to determine how far their social outcomes accord with South Asian Muslim experiences.

We should not exaggerate these differences, not least as Arabs from Morocco, Iraq and Saudi Arabia have very different experiences among themselves here in the UK. But to put things a bit more sharply, just as there are disagreements concerning whether social class or ethnicity better explains ethnic inequalities in Britain today, so too are there disagreement about whether religion or race better explains worse outcomes for British Muslims today. Anthony Heath has already shown how there is some evidence for a specific ‘Muslim’ penalty over and above any ‘ethnic’ penalty in the labour market, indicating the value of this sort of research.

Finally, Muslims are of course themselves a diverse group. In thinking about our analysis of their social experience and in the ways that they will mobilise socially and politically, their own ethnic, national and class background clearly affect their outcomes in Britain. Just as Runnymede recognises that there are various forms of racism and various ways that groups mobilise against that discrimination, so too should we recognise the diverse experience of Muslims in Britain, while still acknowledging that they are all vulnerable to anti-Muslim prejudice, or Islamophobia.

We know from the Census data and elsewhere that Muslims are like many other Britons in insisting that we can and should jointly oppose all these forms of racism and affirm our commitment to values such as equality and tolerance. This is both a principled and a tactical point, as no minority group can ever force a majority to recognise their demands in any democracy. But even as we must uphold more universal or common anti-racist principles and practices, if we wish to respond effectively with real policy solution, we will always need to understand the specific realities and experiences of particular groups, an understanding that the Muslim Council of Britain report advances significantly.

Download the Muslim Council of Britain report from this link