ABSTRACT
There is little doubt that in the British setting at least, the first shoots of any public or political recognition of Islamophobia have to be traced back to 1997 and the publication of the Runnymede Trust’s highly influential report, Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All: Report of the Runnymede Trust Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia (‘the Runnymede report’) (Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia (CBMI), 1997). As timely as it was contentious, the report was indeed groundbreaking and has had an unrivalled legacy in the way in which it has shaped and framed the ways Islamophobia is understood (Allen, 2010). Yet in spite of such deserved accolades, it could be argued that little has changed since its publication in how Islamophobia is defined and approached. It is a sad indictment that despite there being available today significantly more qualitative and quantitative evidence that substantiates the realities of Islamophobia as a real and lived experience of many, the focus of much of the populist discussion has barely changed since 1997. Emotive and typically vociferous, such debates continue to obfuscate the very realities of Islamophobia and the detrimental impact it has on the everyday lives of its unfortunate victims. Few today need question the extent to which Islamophobia exists.
