Islam's bad press by Anwar Akhtar

Islam's bad press | Anwar Akhtar | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

My first thought as I read the negative findings of the Exploring Islam Foundation/YouGov poll about Muslim communities was that I probably wouldn't like me if I had been exposed to the relentless demonisation of British Muslims dished out by the likes of Melanie Philips, Douglas Murray and others on every available media outlet.

The Crucible is currently playing in London's Regent's Park. I'd recommend it to Douglas and Melanie, to see if they recognise where the demonisation of a group of people for their faith, culture, heritage and identity can lead to. Their with-us-or-against-us reductionism feeds directly into the levels of hostility that British Muslim communities face today.

Then there is the regular tabloid frenzy of misreported "scandals" around British Muslims, ably documented recently by Peter Oborne.

From Muslims threatening returning British soldiers in Windsor to banning Christmas in Lambeth, the stream of false media stories about Muslims, and the hype around fringe fascists such as Anjem Choudary, helps set the tone for the thugs of the English Defence League who've decided it is a great wheeze to scale up the recreational violence traditionally associated with certain football firms and skinhead gangs into a more structured day out, turning up en masse for "Paki bashing" in various cities in Britain.

They goad Muslim communities, especially our youth, in the hope of getting a race war. They won't. Thankfully we have a society where the police now usually police fairly. They know to deal with mobs inciting violence, not the communities targeted by the mobs. It wasn't ever thus, as anybody that remembers Southall in 1979 and Blair Peach will tell you.

British Muslims come in all shapes and sizes – doctors, artists, youth workers, taxi drivers, entrepreneurs, layabouts, scientists, dope heads, police officers, DJs, military personnel, Conservative cabinet ministers.

Polls telling us that many Muslims are very religious and are not happy about parts of western foreign policy are not that helpful.

I can't see these polls including questions about the arms industry's business activities in the South Asia and the Middle East, or the investment in religious extremism by the west during the Cold War. Nor are Douglas or Melanie likely to say: "It is not all a one way street; the west has much responsibility for these issues".

What we need is a long term focus on social and economic factors affecting not just Muslim communities, but many others as well – educational underachievement, health, gang culture, unemployment and cultural isolation, segregated schools that lead to ghettos and racial tension.

Also, given that the majority of the British Pakistanis, British Bangladeshis and British Indians who make up the majority of the British Muslim population are concerned, interested and involved in their ancestral homelands, it is about time this was used as a positive.

Some of the most important campaigners against extremism and sectarianism are the political and cultural activists and artists of South Asia, as are those working in welfare and social programmes.

The arts, culture and education are vital to challenging sectarianism and we must support those involved in this work within Muslim diaspora communities and wherever the EDL is looking to spread its poisonous message.

For those of us from the Muslim world, it is vital not only that our many histories, traditions, cultures and art forms are protected from the sectarian reactionaries, but that the next generation is given every chance to understand the richness of Muslim communities and traditions, and be allowed to build their version of their own cultures. The work of the Exploring Islam Foundation is to be welcomed, encouraged and broadened.

And it cannot be said too often that the kind of religious extremism we have seen emanating from parts of South Asia is a political phenomenon, given to the world by forces involved in the Cold War. It was an extension of empire. It now falls on all of us to address these challenges socially, politically and culturally rather than another round of polls bellyaching over the stigmatisation of British Muslim communities.