What kinds of discrimination legislation is there to protect people who are disadvantaged by involuntary identities? What is the thinking behind these protections and what is their outcome?_ A new study by Bristol University examines 30 years of government legislation and landmark legal rulings to consider the impact of these issues on racial and ethnic minorities, and finds that current approaches frequently treat anti-Muslim prejudice with less seriousness than other forms of discrimination. The research is published in the latest issue of _Patterns of prejudice’. The study, _The politics of voluntary and involuntary identities: are Muslims in Britain an ethnic, racial or religious minority?’, by Dr Nasar Meer, Research Associate in the Department of Sociology and the Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship, reveals that legal formulations of race and racism often ignore how Muslims are discriminated as a racial minority. Britain has taken a mainly gradual approach in outlawing discrimination based on gender, race and ethnicity, disability, age, sexual orientation, as well as encouraging the monitoring of institutional under-representation among such groups.http://themuslimweekly.com/newsdetails/fullstoryview.aspx?NewsID=5C074BF87DE7DEB440855E44&MENUID=HOMENEWS&DESCRIPTION=UK%20News (link temporary; some news sites may require registration)
