Imran Awan is deputy director of the Centre for Applied Criminology at Birmingham City University. He is co-editor of "Policing cyber hate, cyber threats and cyber terrorism," and "Extremism, Counter-terrorism and Policing." The views expressed in this commentary are solely his.

This piece was originally published in 2014 and has been updated to reflect a change in the author's editor's note.

Indeed, Islamophobia is often perpetuated by fear and a sense that Muslims are taking over our jobs, our homes and our lives, thus leading to a polarizing society and the so-called clash of civilizations.

And it's common to see issues such as the name of Mohammed being used by the far-right into vitriolic hate against Muslims. Take for example the Daily Mail headline in January 2014: "One in 10 babies in England is a Muslim: Those practising the religion 'could soon outnumber actively worshipping Christians.'" The article, which was accompanied by an image of two Muslim women wearing the face veil, showed this pervading sense of online anti-Muslim hate emerge with comments such as: "Surprise, surprise, ban the burka now before its too late!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" and "This has to stop this is a Christian country the next thing sharia law."

Imran Awan

Improving media practices and media responsibility on portraying and reporting fairly on Islam and British Muslims, without bias or discrimination or intent to incite anti-Muslim prejudice, is important. The media must provide a more responsible, objective and proportionate way of reporting on stories.

Unfortunately, though, the stories above are not isolated. In The Sun last year an article entitled, "Ramadan a ding-dong," again provided a sensationalized and biased viewpoint that seeks to undermine all Muslims and portray Islam in a negative light. As a result, we are seeing British Muslims as a group suffer as a result of bad journalism that fuels extremist and far-right fringe groups such as Anjem Choudary and Muslims for Crusades.

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