We have taken all of the incidents that we received from January 2013 to the end of December 2013 and with the algorithm that we have built into the bespoke case management software that we specially developed for TELL MAMA, we have been able to automatically collate ‘high frequency’ use words that are directly related to anti-Muslim hate and prejudice. The following word cloud is an indicator of the highest frequency words that are used and is a good visual representation of the frequency of these terms. The higher the frequency and use of a term, the larger they are visually represented.
This ‘word cloud‘ is one way of visualising data. What it does is to highlight keywords that are related to anti-Muslim prejudice. We are now beginning to build a good understanding of the language of anti-Muslim hate and which police forces and the CPS can associate with language that perpetrators use in anti-Muslim hate incidents.
NFSE – EDL ‘banter’ (Never fu**ing surrender England),
Paedo – This is targeted at individuals perceived to be Muslims and this language correlated to cases of grooming in the UK. The term is also used by anti-Muslim extremists who cite the marriage of Prophet Muhammad to Aisha and the story according to these geniuses is that Muslims must be inherently paedophilic by nature. What religious scholars they are!
Taqiyya – We have picked up on this before and a detailed description is provided here.
Muzzie – slang and derogatory term for Muslim, mostly repeated by female EDL types with nothing much to do at home except take half-clothed pictures of themselves.
Muzrats – associating Muslims with vermin much like the National Socialist language of the 1930’s associating gay people, Jews and Romany groups with bacteria, rodents and lice.
Dhimmi – a term used as slang by some anti-Muslim haters to suggest that Muslims (as a whole), will treat non-Muslims as second class citizens when in positions of power. There is no historical context provided and the blanket use merely promotes the further caricaturing of Muslims as a whole. The thrust here is that Muslims are secretly looking to take over and get into positions of power, (reminiscent of other language we have heard against Jewish communities)?
Ninja – targeted at women who wear the Niqab (face veil).
What is interesting to note is how strong race is associated with religiously aggravated hate terms. Both terms are strongly visually represented and this has possible implications for front-line officers who record hate crimes. What may seem like a case that presents race hate statements will need officers to drill down further and to look at whether religious aggravated hate terms were also used. There are clear implications here for policing and we will continue to have these discussions with forces as an ongoing concern.
Lastly, what is also interesting to note is that the term ‘paedo’ has overtaken the term ‘terrorist’ which many within Muslim communities said was the prevalent term after 9/11. This is a good example which shows the fluid nature of language and how national or international events can shape language which shapes the image of communities.