Anti-racist organizations historically avoided treating religion as within their remit

Evidence

Runnymede followed many other race equality or anti-racist organizations in studiously avoiding too much discussion of or focus on religion or faith. Religion, faith and belief were seen to raise a different set of issues from those relating to race and ethnicity, which might even have more in common with gender or sexual orientation than with religion. — Runnymede Trust (ed. Farah Elahi & Omar Khan), Islamophobia, 84

Categorization

• XREF: This explains the conceptual tension the field’s central debate turns on: treating Islamophobia as analogous to race/ethnicity (the 2017 racialization turn) versus as a distinct religion-related category — the exact contested axis between Runnymede and critical-Muslim-studies. — connects to: Muslim groups embraced the report while race-equality institutions ignored it — A. Hussain, N. Meer, Framing Muslim Integration, 742; The report pressed governments to treat religion like race in equality policy — A. Hussain, N. Meer, Framing Muslim Integration, 745; The commission’s Islamophobia work left the race relations paradigm untouched — A. Hussain, N. Meer, Framing Muslim Integration, 754 (+6 more)
• QUESTION: What exactly was ‘seen to raise’ — the Commission’s reasoning that religion might share more with gender or sexual orientation than with race is a strikingly specific claim worth chasing into the original 1997 text.

Related

• Anti-racist orgs once treated religion as a separate axis from race. (similarity 0.97)
• Mainstream race-equality bodies resisted framing Islamophobia as a racial issue (similarity 0.90)
• Muslim groups embraced the report while race-equality institutions ignored it (similarity 0.89)
• Mainstream race-equality groups narrowed Islamophobia to mere religious discrimination (similarity 0.89)
• Trustees resisted an Islamophobia commission as a radical break from the colour-based race paradigm. (similarity 0.88)
• The commission’s Islamophobia work left the race relations paradigm untouched (similarity 0.87)
• The report pressed governments to treat religion like race in equality policy (similarity 0.86)
• Muslims were told anti-Muslim racism cannot exist because Muslims are not a race (similarity 0.85)
• The Runnymede Trust’s founding paradigm was colour-based race relations, not religion. (similarity 0.84)
• Mainstream anti-Islamophobia defense framed bias as cultural misunderstanding, not racism (similarity 0.84)
• Two decades of advocacy left the dominant race relations paradigm untouched (similarity 0.83)
• Separating Islamophobia as ideology from racism undermines anti-racist struggle (similarity 0.83)
• The report’s racial-religious conflation undermines Islamophobia’s distinctiveness as a category (similarity 0.83)
• The Runnymede report reframed anti-Muslim prejudice as faith-based rather than ethnic. (similarity 0.83)
• Anti-racist movements often fail to see anti-Muslim bigotry as racism (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• Mainstream race-equality bodies resisted framing Islamophobia as a racial issue #exemplifies (0.90) — A. Hussain, N. Meer, Framing Muslim Integration, 753
• Mainstream race-equality groups narrowed Islamophobia to mere religious discrimination #exemplifies (0.90) — Runnymede Trust (ed. Farah Elahi & Omar Khan), Islamophobia, 748
• Muslims were told anti-Muslim racism cannot exist because Muslims are not a race #exemplifies (0.85) — Runnymede Trust (ed. Farah Elahi & Omar Khan), Islamophobia, 583
• State demarcation of good versus bad Muslims blocked meaningful anti-Islamophobia work #exemplifies (0.72) — A. Hussain, N. Meer, Framing Muslim Integration, 502