The other day I was searching for a place to stay in Paris for a weekend break with my sister. I tried to make a reservation via Airbnb at a small studio flat and was surprised when the host replied saying that she didn’t feel comfortable letting me stay because she didn’t trust me. I tried another apartment and received another message saying pretty much the same thing.

Name changes helped my Jewish relatives dodge prejudice | Letters Read more

Having never had any problems with previous hosts, and having gained good reviews when I’ve used the service outside Europe, I couldn’t understand their distrust. The only thing they knew about me was my name.

There are no official figures about racial or religious discrimination in France, owing to laws that prohibit this type of data being collected, but studies have shown that applicants with Muslim names are significantly less likely to be called in for job interviews than those with Christian names who have the same qualifications. Similarly, research in Britain has shown that religion now faces more prejudice than race in the workplace. Recently I’ve started to hear first-hand stories about its impact.

Growing up, I was encouraged by several friends to use the nickname Immy because it was less identifiably Muslim. I was told that on a professional level it would serve me to be ambiguous about my background, especially in emails, because judgments might be made about me. While I largely resisted this advice, many friends did change their names for exactly this reason. There’s Ozzy, whose real name is Oussama; Youcef, who became Joe; and Islam, who likes his name and is known as such by his family and friends but uses his middle name, which is less identifiably Muslim, in a professional environment.

We are all ambitious young people with diverse backgrounds, personalities and experiences, and being Muslim is part of that. But none of us want to be defined solely by our religion.That’s partly because what it means to be Muslim for us isn’t the same as what it means for a lot of other people. Our generation has grown up in the shadow of 9/11. We have no recollection of the time before, when barely any non-Muslims cared what religion we were.

As a Muslim woman I was never fearful in Britain. But today I’m afraid | Masuma Rahim Read more

Every day, as I walk to work past newsstands, it seems there’s another front-page splash demonising some aspect of Islam. Online, the comment threads below any article on Muslims are full of vitriolic messages. Someone once said to me: “If I believed what they said about Muslims, I would have to hate my own mother, my family and everything about myself.” Not surprisingly, there are weekly reports of Islamophobic attacks; and vicious Islamophobic rants have been filmed on public transport.

The relentless assaults from popular broadsheets and tabloids are echoed by political leaders too. David Cameron’s language around refugees – “swarms”, “bunch of migrants” – contributes to the idea that they are a homogenous, threatening group. In January, he said that the “traditional submissiveness of Muslim women” was leaving young men vulnerable to radicalisation – reinforcing the stereotypes that Muslim women have to deal with daily. Cameron upset not only the mothers, but also their children – people of my generation, who have come through the British education system, and have navigated the path of being young, British and Muslim.

All of this trickles down into the social interactions Muslims have every day. I have friends who were raised in Muslim households who assume different lifestyles when they leave home, moving away from the faith of their parents. They drink alcohol, live with their partners before marriage, and don’t fast for Ramadan. Even so, they still feel under attack, and find themselves defending a religion they don’t even believe in: it is still a big part of their identity, whether they like it or not.

It’s not about having a victim mentality. But the persistent culture of suspicion and finger-pointing means that Muslims often find themselves in a defensive position they don’t want to be in.

If a moderate like Sadiq Khan shouldn’t stand for London mayor, which Muslim can? | Mehdi Hasan Read more

In a country where less than 5% of the population identifies as Muslim, most people are unlikely to have close contact with this religion. Instead, their views are shaped by what they read or hear in the media. But this skewed narrative merely creates a growing divide that doesn’t need to exist.

Something has to change, for if we do nothing to improve the worrying way in which Muslims are spoken about, the future is going to be more and more uncomfortable for all of us, with more division, more suspicion, more hate.

Even if we all altered our names to make people feel more comfortable, that wouldn’t change the basic fact that Muslims are part of Britain and part of British history – and we aren’t going anywhere any time soon.