Everyday experiences of Islamophobia in university spaces: A qualitative study in the United Kingdom

Abstract

Two recent reports suggest that Muslim students are experiencing increased levels of Islamophobia while studying at universities in the United Kingdom (UK). While so, the issue has attracted little scholarly investigation. Responding to this gap in the literature, this article sets out new and previously unpublished findings drawn from qualitative research undertaken with more than 70 Muslim students enrolled at four UK universities. Having set out the methodological approaches, this article begins by contextualising the research within the broader scholarly study of contemporary Islamophobia. Having framed the findings within the context of critical Islamophobia theory, the findings are set out using a threefold thematic structure. This structure affords an insight into the everyday experience of Islamophobia in university spaces and includes: hate incidents on campus; Othering in the learning and teaching spaces; and, microaggressions in university accommodation. In doing so, this article generates new knowledge about the everyday nature of Islamophobia as experienced by Muslim students within university spaces in the UK today.

Introduction

According to recent estimates, around a quarter of a million students currently studying at the United Kingdom’s (UK) near 140 universities identify as Muslim (Guest et al., 2020). Enrolled on a vast array of different courses across a broad spectrum of subjects and disciplines, those students who identify as Muslim comprise around 9% of the UK’s total university student population: disproportionately larger – in fact, almost double– the percentage population of Muslims in the UK more broadly (Office for National Statistics, 2012). Despite comprising a significant percentage of the UK’s university student population, knowledge about their experience of studying at university is relatively scant. To date, the focus of existing scholarly studies in the UK have been primarily twofold: first, centring on the politics and political activism of Muslim students (Appleton, 2005; Degli Esposti and Scott-Baumann, 2019) and second, investigating how Muslim students have been impacted by counter-terrorism and counter-extremism policies (Abbas et al., 2023; Allen, 2017; Brown and Saeed, 2015; Saeed and Johnson, 2016. Zempi and Tripli, 2023). A handful of others have been rather more narrowly focussed and include those such as Stevenson’s (2018) investigation into inequality and inequity among Muslim students in higher education or Anand and Redclift’s (2022) study on university students of Bangladeshi-heritage specifically, the latter preferring ethnicity as opposed religion as a theoretical and analytical lens. Elsewhere, Malik and Wykes (2018) adopt a more expansive approach that takes in a broad array of socio-political, religious and policy considerations.

As part of their research into the Muslim university experience at its broadest, both Codiroli Mcmaster (2020) and Islam and Mercer-Mapstone (2021) acknowledge the need for more research to be undertaken that specifically investigates the isolation and exclusion as also prejudice and discrimination that many Muslim students are known to experience. Noting the ‘dearth’ of scholarly literature that has to date investigated the matter, Islam and Mercer-Mapstone (2021) assert that this is necessary given the extent to which the UK university experience of many Muslim students has been shown to be distinctly ‘non-Muslim’: where neither their Muslim identity nor their religious needs readily or typically sit within the ‘normal’ university experience. As they go on, this is in part due to an increase in the incidence and experience of Islamophobia. Two recent policy-focussed reports confer similar. In the first, Guest et al. (2020) note that while most (non-Muslim) university students tend to have a relatively positive view of Muslim students, a minority are known to uphold views that draw on the discursive tropes and stereotypes of contemporary Islamophobia. This is in part due to how certain counter-terrorism and counter-extremism policies have instilled fear and mistrust about Muslim students. As a result, they conclude that Muslim students are likely to experience Islamophobia within the UK’s university spaces. In the second, Akel (2021) goes even further. Noting the growing propensity for Muslim students to feel unsafe within the UK’s university spaces, she adds that growing numbers of Muslim students are nowadays likely to experience ‘manifestations of Islamophobia, both overt and covert’ (Akel, 2021: 8).

While little scholarly attention has been afforded to the investigation of Islamophobia in the UK’s university spaces, a small number of studies do explore the experience of Islamophobia among Muslim university students elsewhere in the world. These include Abu Khalaf et al. (2023) and Ahmadi et al. (2018) in the United States of America, both of whom approach the phenomenon of Islamophobia from the broad perspective of looking at all educational settings. Similarly located is El-Haj-Ibrahim (2022) who notes how despite high levels of ‘religious tolerance’ being readily apparent on university campuses in California, it did ‘not equate to a campus free from Islamophobia’ (p. 40). As she went on, this was especially true for visually identifiable female Muslim students: a point made Seggie and Sanford (2010) a decade previous when noting the gendered nature of Islamophobia in a similar setting. Similar too, the findings from Alizai’s (2021) study of Muslim students at Canadian universities. For her, because the incidence of Islamophobia was distinctly gendered so too was the experience of Islamophobia greater among female Muslim students than it was any of their male Muslim counterparts. In some ways unsurprising, from the preliminary studies currently available it would appear that the incidence and experience of Islamophobia in the contemporary setting of the university campus would reflect that of the incidence and experience of ‘street-level’ Islamophobia more generally where Muslim women – visible Muslim women especially– are disproportionately targeted (Allen, 2013, 2014; Chakraborti and Zempi, 2012).

This article therefore is a direct response to a specific and identified gap in the existing scholarly literature: one that investigates the incidence and experience of Islamophobia among Muslim students in the UK’s university spaces. In the context of the UK, this article builds on the findings of the two recently published reports referred to previously to investigate what would appear to be a timely and potentially worsening situation. So too does this article duly build upon at the same time as responding to the existing scholarly canon. To do so, this article reports on research with more than 70 students from UK universities (including men and women, all of whom identify as being Muslim, and including those who are both visible or non-visible). The article begins with an outline of methods and then provides the reader with a discussion of the literature on contemporary Islamophobia to contextualise the findings. The findings are presented under three themes derived from the empirical data. These themes are: hate incidents on campus; Othering in the learning and teaching spaces; and, microaggressions in university accommodation. From here, a discussion is included before ending the article with a brief conclusion.

Methodology

This article centres on a qualitative study designed to explore and better understand the experience of Muslim students within UK university spaces. The study comprised both a survey and focus groups with students who self-identified as Muslim and were registered on courses at one of four universities located in central England. The research questions sought to investigate: (Q1) Muslim students’ understanding of what is meant by Islamophobia; (Q2) Muslim students’ overt experiences of Islamophobia while studying at university; (Q3) Muslim students’ covert experiences of Islamophobia while studying at university; (Q4) how experiences of Islamophobia made Muslim students feel. This article primarily centres on Q2 and Q3 while drawing on responses to Q1 and Q4 for appropriate context. In total, 73 Muslim students participated in the study. Like other studies that have sought to investigate experiences of Islamophobia (Allen, 2020; Zempi and Awan, 2016; Zempi and Tripli, 2023), not only was participation voluntary but so too was the recruitment of participants necessarily purposive. The study was advertised using existing networks across the four universities and which included the author’s own personal and professional contacts – both students and academics – and via established student bodies and groups including student societies generally and Islamic societies specifically. As the sampling was non-probabilistic, this of course has implications on the generalisability of the findings. However, given that all those recruited had experienced Islamophobia within certain UK university spaces, this was an effective approach that ensured that the data gathered would be ‘information rich’ (Hennink et al., 2011). Such approaches to recruitment are therefore not only preferable but so too are they proven in the context of research into Islamophobia (Allen, 2020; Zempi and Awan, 2016).

Comprising both open and closed questions – including a number of free text boxes so that answers could be explained and expanded upon – a total of 73 questionnaires were completed: by 49 female Muslim students and by 24 male Muslim students. In addition, three focus groups were facilitated that were recorded and transcribed verbatim to ensure experiences could be conveyed and understood using their own words and phrases. The 14 students participating in the focus groups were recruited after having previously completed the survey: eight of the focus group participants were female while six were male. As is to be expected of those studying at university, the age of all those who participated were between the ages of 18 and 24 years. In addition, while all the Muslim students who participated in the study self-identified as being ‘British’ – be that in terms of nationality, citizenship status or both – their stated ethnicity was more diverse. These included 32 students of Pakistani heritage, 9 Bangladeshi, 9 Somali, 7 Indian, 4 Yemeni, 4 White British, 3 Arab, 2 Black British, 1 Eritrean, 1 Turkish and 1 Kurdish.

When analysing the data, an inductive approach was adopted. From using Braun and Clarke’s (2013) six-phase approach to thematic analysis, three overarching themes were developed: (1) hate incidents on campus; (2) Othering in the learning and teaching spaces; (3) microaggressions in university accommodation. To ensure the anonymity of the students engaged, no names have been used and any information that could identify them has been removed. For the same reason, so too are the four universities also anonymised. In the Findings section, illustrative extracts from the surveys and focus groups are used to provide sufficient evidence of the themes within the data. That said, this article makes no claims to the generalisability of either the themes or the data presented here. This is important because as Hargreaves (2015) rightly notes, overly broad conclusions about the prevalence and voracity of Islamophobia have at times been adduced from certain small-scale qualitative studies. While true, so too is it important to note Polit and Beck’s (2010) view that qualitative generalisability is something of a utopian aspiration. Marshall (1996) and Morse (1999) agree, adding that generalisability should never be the sole measure of important research. As such, the main contribution of this article is to provide insights into students’ experiences of higher education in the UK and to do so through their own testimony.

Framing islamophobia

Islamophobia has been a contested concept for two decades, ‘routinely and regularly castigated and challenged, decried and denied’ (Allen, 2020: 2) in both public and political spaces. While so, there has been something of a ‘critical turn’ in the scholarly literature in recent years: evident in the studies of those such as Taras (2012), Tyrer (2013), Carr (2016) and Jackson (2018) among various others. From analysing these and other post-critical turn studies, Allen (2020) derives five component observations about contemporary Islamophobia. First, because Islamophobia is neither consistent nor uniform it is unlikely that any single definition will achieve consensus given the complex nature of the phenomenon and the multiplicity of ways in which it can be manifested. Second, Islamophobia functions by asymmetrically shifting between implicit and explicit identifiers and markers of being Muslim, of Muslimness and the religion of Islam that are – at times -also used to target Muslims for Islamophobia. Third, Islamophobia is shaped and informed by a broad array of religious, social, cultural and racial frames that – at times – do not require Muslims or Islam to be explicitly or specifically named. Fourth, Islamophobia is wholly contextual and responsive to the specific setting within which it is manifested and experienced, and it is shaped and informed by a combination of social, political, cultural, religious, theological, national and geographical factors at any given time. Finally, Islamophobia is a wholly contemporary discriminatory phenomenon that – again, at times– draws upon and duly cites history and historical incidents as a means of justifying, rationalising and legitimising discrimination, bigotry and hate in the here and now.

For Allen (2010, 2020) and Sheehi (2011), Islamophobia is best conceived as an ideological phenomenon: one that makes known and affords meaning about Muslims and Islam via complex systems of signifiers and symbols that shape and inform the social consensus. Importantly, this means that Islamophobia is not restricted to any specific action, practice or discrimination but is instead evident in a vast array of different social, political and cultural processes whereby the identification and recognition of Muslims and Islam as both ‘Other’ and ‘problem’ are routinely consumed without question or contestation. What is known and understood about Muslims and Islam therefore can be seen to be little more than mere ideological constructs. For Clarke, such ideological constructs function by serving to reinforce and reify notions that purport to demarcate who ‘we’ are from who ‘they’ are: ‘them’ from ‘us’. Deploying processes of stigmatisation and marginalisation, what ensues in the context of Islamophobia is an unquestioned acceptance that all Muslims without differentiation can be reduced to a unidimensional homogenous ‘Other’. According to Alizai (2021), what ensues is a Muslim Other that is attributed with a series of negative and stereotypical characteristics – as indeed meanings and understandings– that are irremovable and thereby eternally fixed.

These meanings and understandings are referred to by Allen (2010) as ‘normative truths’ in that they inform what he goes on to describe as ‘Islamophobia thinking’: the means through which Muslims and Islam become known and subsequently understood. Given the normative truths confer the belief that it is therefore ‘common-sense’ to see Muslims as being an enemy Other – and to therefore be suspicious and fearful of them– so it becomes easy to rationalise and justify the need to respond or resist as indeed hate and attack in the most extreme circumstances. Consequently, the normative truths provide a means by which those seeking to vent Islamophobia anger, bigotry or hate find justification and legitimacy. Though Allen (2020) is keen to stress that not all recipients to such normative truths are Islamophobic, he adds that ‘Islamophobia thinking’ is far from the preserve of those perpetrating attacks.

In the context of this article, this understanding establishes a two-fold premise upon which everyday experiences of Islamophobia can be framed. First are the more overt and potentially tangible experiences of Islamophobia, those that can be understood as being any malicious act that is directed at Muslims (or those thought to be Muslim), their material property (including mosques), or organisations where there exists evidence that the motivation, content or perpetrator focussed on a perceived Muslim identity or other symbol of Muslims or Islam. In this way, such an attack is one that would appear to be motivated, rationalised or justified on the basis of the normative truths relating to Muslims or Islam. In other words, a hate incident. In the context of the UK, this not affords resonance but so too ensures consistency with the Crown Prosecution Service’s definition of a ‘hate incident’: any incident known or perceived to be motivated by hostility or prejudice including verbal abuse, harassment, intimidation, physical attacks and violence. Second are those experiences that are less tangible and in line with Akel (2021), more covert. Here, these are understood to be the brief, commonplace and everyday verbal and behavioural occurrences which, irrespective of intention or otherwise, function to communicate hostile and derogatory slights and insults. Given the resonance with Sue’s (2010) conception of microaggressions this is the descriptor that is preferred throughout. In doing so, this two-fold approach not only ensures relevance and resonance between the new empirical findings set out here and the existing scholarly canon but so too does it go some way towards closing the gap between academic and the two recent policy focussed reports both of which evolved out of practice-based settings.

Findings

Hate incidents on campus

Irrespective of setting or location, existing literature shows that the more overt and tangible experiences of Islamophobia (hate incidents) are typically ‘low level’ (Allen, 2010, 2020; Allen and Nielsen, 2002; Chakraborti and Zempi, 2012; Zempi and Awan, 2016). Whilst referring to these as low-level is not without problem, the existing literature uses this term to include incidents such as verbal abuse, harassment and intimidation and for Muslim women specifically, the removal of headscarves or face veils. So too was this true of university campuses. For almost a quarter of the Muslim students in the sample, their experience of an Islamophobic hate incident involved verbal abuse, name calling or derogatory slurs. As they explained, expletive-laden variations on ‘terrorist’ or ‘extremist’ were the most common. Clearly resonating with the existing literature, this type of hate incident is likely to have been informed by the normative truths that confer legitimacy on the view that all Muslims without differentiation are either terrorists or extremists and if not, are supportive or sympathetic to those Muslims who are. While hate incidents were far from widespread, those who did experience this type of Islamophobia spoke about how they took place across a range of different settings and locations on campus. To this extent, there appeared little pattern or regularity. As one of the female students engaged put it, ‘. . .sometimes people mutter and make comments when walking past me’. None of the students said they knew the identity of those delivering the verbal abuse, so it is reasonable to assume that this type of Islamophobia was almost entirely opportunistic: offering little insight regarding who the perpetrators are or what their motivation might be.

Unsurprisingly, female students who were visibly identifiable as Muslim were also the most likely to experience hate incidents. While only around a quarter of the respondents said they had experienced verbal abuse, name calling or other derogatory slurs in the campus setting, one hijab wearing student claimed that she had experienced ‘verbal abuse at least 20–30 times’. In line with how hate incidents are typically experienced away from the campus setting, female Muslim students believed they were disproportionately targeted for Islamophobic abuse and name calling because of their visibility and subsequent recognition as Muslims. As one put it, female Muslim students who were also visible were ‘easy targets’. For some, their visibility went some way to explain the seemingly random nature of the hate incidents experienced. As some of the female students discussed in one of the focus groups, their visibility afforded anyone wanting to vocalise their Islamophobic views or feelings a failsafe opportunity to do so. That these were also somewhat random – targeting any female student who could be visibly identified as Muslim – also meant that it was unlikely the perpetrator would be recognised thereby meaning they would neither be held accountable for their actions nor would there be any wider ramifications within the context of the university or within society more widely. In the same focus group, another female student recalled a peaceful protest in response to a number of instances of Islamophobic graffiti that had appeared on campus over a period of weeks. As she went on, neither she nor her friends – all of whom were also visibly Muslim – took part. When asked why, she said they did not want to be identified for fear of being targeted for retaliation. As she went on, she and her friends just ‘wanted to keep our heads down’.

Others spoke about the different responses and impacts resulting from their experience of hate incidents. While one female student said ‘I just continue with my day-to-day activities as normal, it does affect you in a way, but you just have to remember that people have their own issues’, others – both male and female– spoke about how their experiences had detrimentally affected their mental health and emotional wellbeing. For female students in particular, their experience made them feel anxious, scared and unsafe. For one of the male students who experienced verbal abuse, the impact was university-specific. As he explained, his experience made him ‘more conscious of campus, of my surroundings. . .’ before adding ‘. . .I now hesitate to go to certain areas alone, especially alleyways between buildings and the quieter parts of campus’. Among the students more widely, there was evidence of a polarity in the responses and impacts of experiencing Islamophobia. For some, their experience left them feeling angry and wanting to retaliate; for others, their experience left them feeling isolated and excluded. While this resulted in some feeling scared and unsafe while on campus, so too did it have another very real and tangible impact: around a fifth of respondents said their experience detrimentally impacted how they interacted with non-Muslim students. As one put it, ‘I’m now nervous around large groups of students especially when I’m walking around non-Muslim students. . .I can’t be open with them or be myself. I’m always moderating my behaviour’.

Othering in the learning and teaching spaces

While hate incident experiences were limited in both type and scale on campus, this was not the case for the less tangible and more covert experiences of Islamophobia. In the learning and teaching spaces – for instance lecture theatres, libraries and seminar rooms among others– one female student spoke about how she felt non-Muslim students not only had ‘this assumption that I’m less worthy. . .[but that] I’m maybe going to do something dangerous to harm them’. Explaining how she was the only Muslim student on her course, she said she was routinely asked questions about why a Muslim would want to study English Literature. Feeling constantly Othered by what is best described as a stream of microaggressions, she said it resulted in her being ‘a lot more cautious about my actions. . .more paranoid and cautious about who I am and how others define me’. Other students spoke similarly. For one of the male students, something similar occurred when he joined the basketball society: greeted with comments from some society members about how they were unaware of Muslims ever playing the sport. As he explained, not only was he taken aback but so too did he feel that his intentions and motivations for joining the society were under scrutiny. When he countered that many Muslims play professional basketball one replied that most of those were ‘black Muslims’ and therefore ‘different’. The student in question identified as being British and of Somali heritage. For another of the students, being regularly and repeatedly asked about what Islam teaches about certain social and political issues was problematic. While few explicitly articulated these experiences as microaggressions, those who did experience this type of questioning alluded to them being premised on the basis of prejudicial and discriminatory understandings. For some of those engaged, they were unequivocal in their belief that those asking the questions were already of the mindset that Muslims were not only inherently different but more importantly, dangerously different.

An ‘us’ and ‘them’ dichotomy was also apparent in how some of the students said they interacted with non-Muslim students in the learning and teaching spaces. Whether perceived or actual, one of the male students engaged said that because of the ‘suspicions’ he believed other students had about him, he ‘had to force myself to seem emotionless when discussing issues about Islam and political issues so that no one could say I’m emotionally biased’. As he went on, ‘it made me feel repressed and as if my intelligence didn’t matter simply because I was Muslim’. Another male student spoke about how he was at pains to distance himself from the perpetrators of the Manchester Arena terror attack in 2017 during a seminar centred on ‘new terrorism’. It was interesting the extent to which both male and female students spoke about how they felt the need to change their behaviours when in the learning and teaching spaces. Some said that this was due to lecturers or fellow students making disparaging or stereotypical comments about Muslims or the religion of Islam. As one female student put it, ‘I have to first denounce certain things before I can share any of my views. . .I feel like I have to constantly explain myself. I’ve suddenly become an ambassador for billions of people who follow the same religion as me but only a few of whom I actually know’. Other seemingly minor interactions albeit still microaggressions were shown to function similarly. These included being the recipient of an ‘unusual look’ or ‘funny’ facial expression from other students. As one female student explained, experiencing microaggressions had the very real potential to make ‘me want to hide and shrink myself so as not to make others feel uncomfortable’. As she went on, it ‘made me more conscious to have to be friendly and look approachable. . .analysing every little action I made in public’.

Some students however spoke about making the conscious decision to be anything but ‘emotionless’. As one female student put it, ‘when I’ve spoken out on issues [associated with Muslims or Islam], I’ve been referred to by other students as “the scary Muslim social justice warrior chick”’. Adding how her outspokenness was regularly ‘met with eye rolls’, she said that other non-Muslim students would either try to silence her by talking over her or dismiss what she did say on the basis she was too ‘emotionally invested’. For her, the only reason some responded in this way was because she was ‘Muslim’ and they were ‘inherently biased against us’. Likewise another male student who said that experiencing micriaggressions resulted in him being ‘angry and more defencive’. As he went on, ‘the more people treated me with suspicion so I became more blunt and outspoken’. For him, studying politics was shaped by ‘narrow minded ignorant people who really know nothing about Islam other than what the media portrays. . .they believe all Muslims are bad and we’re all terrorists who condone the killing of innocent people’. Detrimentally impacting the extent to which he felt he could contribute while in the learning and teaching spaces, so too did he feel this served to constrain exactly what he could and could not say. Through experiencing microaggressions, many felt they were never fully able to contribute without some form of self-imposed censure being necessary.

For those students that had experienced Islamophobia in the form of microaggressions in the learning and teaching spaces, there was a clear understanding about how these were very different from the hate incidents referred to previously: captured by one student as being ‘the sort of thing that makes you feel uncomfortable’. For some, this became apparent when they caught certain non-Muslim students staring at them; some experiencing the same from mere glances. When asked to expand upon this, a couple of the students spoke about a look maybe taking too long or the expression on a person’s face when caught glancing at them. As regards the latter, one female student described this as being given ‘dirty looks’: a widely used colloquialism in the UK that refers to a disapproving or disgusted facial expression. Some also spoke about how certain looks seemingly gave them the ‘cold shoulder’: another UK colloquialism that means to exclude or be harsh and abrupt in your approach to others. While approximately 70% of the students engaged said they had experienced something akin to this, few could articulate what this meant except in terms of ‘feelings’. That said, almost all of the students categorically believed that their respective interpretation of their experience was correct. Referring back to the conception of microaggressions cited previously, these ‘feelings’ are derived from experiencing everyday behavioural occurrences that communicate hostile slights or insults to the recipient. Irrespective of the intentions of those giving ‘dirty looks’ or indeed anything similar, the students felt that they were communicating hostility or insult is all that matters (Sue, 2010). In the teaching and learning spaces therefore, one might rightly conclude that many Muslim students experienced Islamophobia in the form of microaggressions.

Microaggressions in university accommodation

According to recent data, around 70% of UK Muslim students choose to live at home while studying at university: significantly higher than the national average of all students which is around 40% (Guest et al., 2020). In terms of the students who participated in this study, an even higher percentage were known to live at home while studying at university. In fact, only two of the students – both female – were living in university accommodation at the time of the research. Nonetheless, both experienced Islamophobia in similar ways to those doing so in the learning and teaching spaces. According to one of the students, those sharing her accommodation were in many ways receptive to her being Muslim. As she explained, this included agreeing to keep alcohol and pork products in a separate fridge while also making her aware when there was a possibility of male visitors. While appreciated, she said this was counter-balanced by being expected to undergo regular questioning about worryingly stereotypical views about Muslims and Islam. As she recalled, this included being asked on numerous occasions about sexual relations, homosexuality and forced marriage. The same was true of religiously-motivated violence, various conflicts around the worlds and certain terrorist attacks. Feeling as though she was being asked to ‘justify why some Muslims somewhere else in the world were behaving in the way they did’, this resulted in her feeling pressured into ‘playing down’ her religion. By the end of her first year in university accommodation, she said she was terrified of ‘turning on the TV as I was scared of what I might see. I was always scared of the interrogation I’d be forced into after any terrorist attack’.

Similar also for the other female student who chose to live in university accommodation. She also spoke about how those sharing her accommodation would often ask her about various matters relating to Islam and Muslims as if she was an ‘expert voice on all things Islam’. Her experience however became rather more insidious. This included becoming aware of those sharing her accommodation regularly discussing what the ‘real reason’ was for her being at university and choosing to stay in university accommodation. She recalled how over time she felt her flatmates became increasingly suspicious of her; culminating in one of them jokingly saying that she used to think ‘I was at university to bomb and kill them all’. When she asked why she felt like this, her flatmate said ‘she would hear the pipes in my bathroom making noises and would get scared because she thought I was building a bomb’. As she went on, ‘I initially laughed it off but it was only afterwards I realised how offencive and hurtful it was’. The impact of this was that it ‘made me not want to leave the flat to the point where during my second and third year of university, I was depressed and stayed at home much of the time’. Due to regularly and repeatedly experiencing Islamophobic microaggressions, she said she increasingly withdrew herself from both everyday university life and various university spaces.

For both of the students engaged, their experiences provoked certain feelings. As the former put it, ‘these things were always subtle. . .it was as much about what I thought my flatmates didn’t say as what they did’. Not only did this incorporate the looks and glances mentioned previously, but so too the ‘eye rolling’ both spoke about having noticed at times when they were speaking. As one put it, despite certain non-Muslim students requiring her to be an ‘expert voice’ on all things Muslim and Islam, those same students also seemed to get irritated and annoyed whenever she fulfilled the role: believing that she only ever spoke about her religion. As she went on, this often resulted in someone saying ‘let’s change the subject’ before other students gave each other what she described as ‘knowing looks’. On one occasion the student said she light-heartedly asked if she was annoying everyone. Met with silence and awkward smiles, she said their response did little to reassure her. As she went on, it was these microaggressions that served to remind her that in the eyes of some, she was first and foremost a Muslim Other.

Discussion

Despite scant attention having been afforded to investigating experiences of Islamophobia in the UK university spaces, it is important to not only reiterate the lack of generalisability of this small-scale qualitative study but so too avoid adducing any overly broad conclusions from its findings. It is important to remember that the experiences of those engaged may be different from those who were not, especially as participants were purposively recruited. That said, there were two observable resonances with the existing scholarly literature: first, in terms of Islamophobia generally; second, in terms of Islamophobia in university spaces specifically. As regards the first, there was an observable resonance between the hate incidents experienced in university spaces and those experienced in wider society. This was especially true of the seeming gendered nature of the hate incidents experienced. In the same way the existing literature highlights how Muslim women are more likely to be victims of Islamophobia in ‘real-world’ settings (Allen, 2010; Allen and Nielsen, 2002; Chakraborti and Zempi, 2012; Zempi and Awan, 2016), so too was this evident among the students participants here. In line with the existing literature, so too was this seemingly driven by the visibility and subsequent identification of those being targeted as ‘Muslim’. To reiterate the observation of one of the female students engaged, visibly identifiable Muslim women were ‘easy targets’ within the university spaces. On this basis, there seemed to be little surprise about their vulnerability for being targeted for Islamophobia. On the contrary, there may even have been an expectation that they would. In doing so, the findings here present empirical evidence to further support the gendered nature of Islamophobia that is widely discussed in the existing scholarly literature.

The second observable resonance was with the two recent aforementioned policy reports by Guest et al. (2020) and Akel (2021) in evidencing how Muslim students variously and asymmetrically experience Islamophobia within the UK’s university spaces. While Akel (2021) failed to expand upon the observation that these experiences are both overt and covert, the findings here resonate by evidencing experiences of Islamophobia being manifested as hate incidents and microaggressions respectively. So too Guest et al.’s (2020) observation about the existence of negative views about Muslims and the religion of Islam among some non-Muslim students. Here, these negative views were shown to have seemingly shaped and informed the thinking underpinning at least some of experiences of Islamophobia. As regards hate incidents, this was apparent in the predictable deployment of ‘terrorist’ and ‘extremist’ in the content of verbal abuse. So too microaggressions, the notion of Muslims being ‘terrorists’ or ‘extremists’ shaping and informing at least some of fears and concerns expressed by non-Muslim students. From the experiences of Islamophobia presented here, the routine use of ‘terrorist’ and ‘extremist’ are best understood in the context of normative truths: such attributions being taken for granted and unquestioned that in turn justify the need for suspicion and fear. Importantly, the findings from this study confer legitimacy on Guest et al.’s (2020) observation that the UK university spaces have the potential to be hostile environments for Muslim students.

The data in this study also suggests a number of seemingly new and original observations in relation to higher education. The first relates to Islamophobia being contextual to the extent that it is known to be shaped and informed by various social, political, cultural and – at times– geographical factors relevant to where it is being manifested and experienced (Allen, 2020). Within the context of university spaces, this was most evident in the relative scarcity of overt experiences of Islamophobia in particular the apparent lack of experiences that might be described as high-level. While it is widely acknowledged that high-level experiences of Islamophobia are far less common than low-level experiences in today’s UK (Allen, 2020), the absence of any threat, intimidation or violence in the overt experiences encountered might be telling. In this way, the lack of threat, intimidation or violence evident within the experiences of Islamophobia may reflect – and therefore be contextual – to the UK’s university campuses generally. While the lack of generalisability limits the extent to which wide-reaching conclusions might be adduced, the findings presented here might provide preliminary evidence upon which future research investigates the extent to which the experience of Islamophobia in university spaces is contextualised by the social and cultural environment appropriate to university spaces.

So too do the findings relate to the covert experiences of Islamophobia referred to by Guest et al. (2020) and Akel (2021). This was especially evident in those experiences described here as microaggressions. To date, much of the existing scholarly literature relating to Islamophobia more generally has focussed on the overt and thereby more tangible experiences and manifestations of Islamophobia. Here however, the findings evidence that for some of the Muslim students at least, their experience of Islamophobia was little more than a mere ‘feeling’. Shown to be evident in the learning and teaching spaces as indeed university accommodation, the findings would seem to suggest that such ‘feelings’ have no less a detrimental impact than any more tangible equivalent. While the numbers were extremely small, the findings best illustrate this in the context of university accommodation: the cumulative impact of repeat microaggressions seemingly detrimentally extending to all aspects of university life. While the findings might again provide preliminary evidence upon which further research in the university spaces might be premised, so too might this be extended to other spaces and contexts given the lack of consideration afforded to date as regards microaggressions within the existing Islamophobia literature. While such an observation cannot be adduced from this study alone, one might suggest that Islamophobic microaggressions are likely to be rather more commonly manifested than the scholarly literature would currently seem to suggest.

Conclusion

As stated at the outset, this study was a response to an identified gap in the existing literature about the incidence and experience of Islamophobia within higher education and associated university spaces. More specifically, it was a response to the findings from two recently published reports about the everyday incidence and experience of Islamophobia that Muslim students encounter within the UK’s university spaces. It did this by engaging more than 70 university students– all of whom identified as Muslim and had first-hand experiences of Islamophobia – via a survey followed up by three focus groups. In doing so, this study generated new data that was information rich and appropriate to the task in hand and which not only complemented but importantly added to the existing scholarly canon. It achieved this through the identification of three themes that help better understand and duly explain the everyday incidence and experience of Islamophobia encountered by Muslim students within university spaces in the UK today. These experiences are broad and varied, ranging from overt manifestations of Islamophobia (hate crimes) through to more subtle and at times, covert forms (hate incidents and microaggressions). As well as affording empirical evidence to the observations made by both Guest et al. (2020) and Akel (2021), so too did the findings resonate with existing knowledge about the incidence and experience of Islamophobia: via normative truths and gendered manifestations especially. So too did the findings seem to suggest that the experience of Islamophobia in the university spaces was contextually shaped by the social and cultural norms of those same university spaces. Importantly, the study also presented evidence to suggest that the incidence of microaggressions might be more widespread than the existing scholarly literature relating to Islamophobia currently seems to suggest. Founded on empirical data, this article therefore makes an original contribution from which new and much needed knowledge can be drawn. In doing so, it establishes an empirical foundation upon which further – and necessary – research into everyday experiences of Islamophobia in the higher education and university spaces of both the UK and elsewhere can be undertaken.