LONDON, May 24 (IslamOnline) - The Forum Against Islamophobia and Racism (FAIR) was officially launched Tuesday in London to combat "Islamophobia" and persisting racial discrimination against Muslims in the U.K.
Over 200 activists and leaders, including several Members of Parliament and theBritish Home Secretary Jack Straw, attended the launch of the forum.
FAIR, an independent charitable organization, aims to identify and combat Islamophibia via constructive and educational methods.
Jack Straw told the forum that "talk was not enough, we have to have action as well."
He said that there was a dire need to tackle the issues and claimed that he had "fought all of my life against Islamophobia."
Straw, however, declined to comment if his government would take any action based on the findings of a recent Home Office sponsored report.
The Derby University report found that Muslims in the U.K. suffered a "consistently higher level of unfair treatment than…other religious groups," in several key areas including education, employment, the media, immigration, policing and prisons.
FAIR chairman Jeremy Henzell-Thomas criticized the British government saying that it had squandered several opportunities to legislate against religious discrimination.
He dismissed that claim that no multicultural society could be happy as being based on "degrees of blinkeredness" and "ignorance of history," and asked "what about the golden age of coexistence in Spain under enlightened Muslim rule?" emphasizing the exemplary coexistence between different communities during that time.
Henzell-Thomas, a Muslim revert and university lecturer, said that Britain itself was a "mongrel society" of immigrants and that idea of a mono-cultural society was "in defiance of history."
