Dr Jonathan Githens-Mazer of the University of Exeter’s European Muslim research centre and former special branch detective and Scotland Yard counter-terrorism officer Dr Robert Lambert have published a study which “provides prima facie and empirical evidence to demonstrate that…” people in London who commit crimes against Muslims “…are invariably motivated by a negative view of Muslims they have acquired from either mainstream or extremist nationalist reports or commentaries in the media.” An extensive study into the largely negative representations of Muslims in the British media was previously carried out by Elizabeth Poole: Reporting Islam (2002, I B Tauris), which concluded that “…the media as an instrument of public ideology demonizes Islam, portraying it as a threat to Western interests, thus reproducing, producing and sustaining the ideology necessary to subjugate Muslims both internationally and domestically.” (p.17)

It will be interesting to see how much airtime the British media give to this study, and how it’s represented. My scepticism is coloured by the fact that, several years ago, I was talking to a media studies academic at a major British University who claimed to have taken a special interest in Islamophobia in the media, and was even blogging on it. Despite it being widely cited, he’d never even heard of Poole’s study, or research done by Richardson. However, he was aware of a paper, not based on any empirical research, which argued against the existence of Islamophobia in the media.