A Bristol man has claimed he sends two job applications for each job - one with an English name and the other with his real name - and 90 per cent of the time the ‘English’ applicant will get a job interview.
The man, who said his real name was Ali, said it happened during numerous applications including with an unnamed local authority.
In a call to Eddie Mair’s LBC phone-in show following the claims of Islamophobia at the top of the Government, Ali said things had got so bad he was considering moving back to the country he escaped from as a refugee.
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LBC presenter Eddie Mair hosted a phone-in show following allegations made by Conservative MP Nusrat Ghani that when she was sacked as a minister, a senior Government figure told her it was because her being a Muslim was ‘making colleagues feel uncomfortable’.
Mr Mair took a call from a man called Ali, who told the show that this kind of Islamophobia in the workplace was common.
“When it comes to job applications, it’s definitely a big deal,” said Ali. “So if I put the same application through with James or John, I will guarantee getting a job interview. When 90 per cent of the time, if I put it through as Abdul, Aziq or Ali it’s unlikely to go through, unless they are wanting to fill their Islamic quota.
“Many jobs nowadays they want to have diverse employees, so they might have two or three Islamic employees. So for me, I fit the bill of being a potential Islamic employee, and being a black employee, so you may get the job that way.
“But unless that’s the case, it’s unlikely that you’re going to be going for an interview, unfortunately,” he added.
Mr Mair questioned Ali about his experiences, asking him if he submits identical CVs but with different names.
“Yes, I’ve even tested it with a local authority,” he said. “There’s one local authority who I won’t mention on the radio, but it actually happened with the local authority - so I sent it in as James, and then I got a job interview for myself. The following week, I sent it as my name, and I haven’t had a response - exact same CV, same layout, same date of birth, everything. Nothing’s changed.
“It’s depressing, you know. It’s hard enough having to deal with Islamophobia, whether it be in every other part of life, then you have to deal with it in a workplace, where we live in a country that’s a democracy, it’s been a democracy for 300-odd years, we’re the longest running democracy - it’s shameful really.
“It’s embarrassing. It makes me feel less British at times,” he added.
“It’s sad, and it’s an indication of how we are in Britain at the moment, because for so many years, because of the War on Terror, there’s been so many years of negativity about Islam on the TV, in the media and everywhere - every single time you hear about Islam, it’s always something negative to do with Islam,” he added.
He said Muslims across the country were experiencing Islamophobia - and referenced an incident in which a woman in traditional Islamic dress was attacked in Cabot Circus.
“You’ve got millions of Muslims that live in this country. They are there for the bashing. Some of them will say it’s banter. They tried to pull a girl’s hijab off in Bristol city centre and they’ll claim it’s banter. They’ll say ‘oh they were drunk, leave them alone’,” he said.
Bristol Live revealed a spike in Islamophobic incidents and attacks in Bristol in the wake of the EU Referendum in 2016. In 2017, one woman spoke out about her experiences being attacked for wearing a hijab back in 2014, after a similar incident in 2017.
In August 2018, Islamophobic incidents nationally rose by 375 per cent in the week after Boris Johnson compared veiled Muslim women to “letterboxes”, research later showed.
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Monitoring group Tell Mama said the Daily Telegraph column written by the now-prime minister was followed by the biggest spike in anti-Muslim hatred in 2018, as his words were repeated by racists abusing Muslims on the street and online.
In the three weeks after the article was published last August, 42 per cent of offline Islamophobic incidents reported “directly referenced Boris Johnson and/or the language used in his column”, the report said.
“It’s unbelievable really, but what can we do about it?” said Ali. “We sit there in silence.”
He told Eddie Mair that things were so bad he was looking into moving back to the country he came from as a child refugee.
Somaliland has recently broken away from Somalia after a bitter civil war that sparked a refugee crisis, and last week, MPs debated whether the UK Government should now recognise the fledgling state.
For Ali, who is originally from Somaliland, returning there is an option, he told LBC. “I’ve looked into moving away, back to the country I’ve originally came from. I came here as a refugee. I’m not sure you’ve seen in Parliament, they were having this debate about Somaliland,” he said. “So hopefully I’m trying to move back there, if Britain can recognise Somaliland. A lot of us Somalilanders are going home. And we wouldn’t have to suffer those issues,” he added.
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