Fostering workplace respect in an era of anti-Muslimism and Islamophobia

Abstract

Purpose The marginalization of Muslims can foster anxiety, anger, or fear in the workplace. Such negative reactions may prompt incivility among coworkers, denigrating a thoughtful regard for others. While legal protections are intended to promote fairness, mandates do not always prevent discrimination. As a result, management needs to frame anti-Muslimism as an ethical issue and proactively cultivate environments that support respect. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach To understand how anti-Muslimism may emerge in organizational settings, this work defines Islamophobia and examines how it manifests as workplace discrimination. The extant literature on the subject and a sample of anti-Muslim discrimination cases are studied to better understand this phenomenon. Findings An analysis of representative Equal Employment Opportunity Commission cases shows that a lack of accommodation for religious practices is a major ethical issue. Management can proactively address value tensions by creating safe spaces for organizational learning. Balanced experiential inquiry is offered as a process to help employees reveal their embedded biases through personal reflection and collective inquiry. Practical implications If managers intend to encourage equity and inclusion, they need to foster organizational learning that tackles emerging forms of discrimination like Islamophobia. A sustained focus on moral development becomes an imperative toward establishing an ethical climate and a workplace that fosters respect for all organizational members. Social implications Because organizations are at the intersection of business and society, it is incumbent upon managers to create environments that reject hostilities toward those who may be perceived as different. Originality/value In today’s sociopolitical climate, the concern of discrimination toward Muslims is a mainstream ethical issue. A compliance-based approach to advance organizational ethics is not enough. The authors present a way forward, building moral strength through moral competency.

A relational perspective comparison of workplace discrimination toward Muslims in Muslim-minority and Muslim-majority countries

“…Most meso-level discriminatory problems in Muslim-minority countries come from the incongruity between organizational and Islamic practices. Studies reported that Muslims face troubles at work because of social networking activities that involve alcohol consumption (Arifeen, 2020;Scott and Franzmann, 2007;Shah and Shaikh, 2010) and difficulty to perform prayers as formally regulated by the organizations (Liao et al, 2017;Lovat et al, 2013;Sekerka and Yacobian, 2018). In addition to the challenges resulted from organizational policy and custom, Muslims in Muslimminority countries also face discrimination from work-related stakeholders like customers, Roles to be performed in the family (e.g., Sakai and Fauzia, 2016) Family discouragement (e.g., Ghasemi, 2013) managers and co-workers.…”

The impact of workplace spirituality on work-based learners

“…This is possibly not surprising considering how complex individual spirituality can be. Moreover, historical attempts to define spirituality by how it is perceived from an organisational viewpoint have represented a considerable hurdle, which has complicated policy making (Khaled et al 2012;Sekerka, and Yacobian, 2018). Nevertheless, management are missing the opportunity to benefit from positive values and meet the core needs of the workplace by not developing spiritual policies (Mitchell and Beninger, 2015).…”

“…Their study showed that the perceived view of Muslim workers in their study was that discrimination against them existed within the workplace, whereas in reality employers in the study showed a high level of commitment to respecting the traditions and beliefs of Muslims with little discrimination against Muslim employees being apparent. However, the research by Weller et al (2001) and Vlas (2017), which examined conflict and discrimination in the workplace as reported by members of different ethnic and religious groups, found that Muslims reported the highest level of such incidents, both in terms of the number of respondents indicating that unfair treatment was experienced, and the number reporting these incidents as frequent rather than occasional and the current climate of Islamophobia in many countries has continued to reflect this nearly two decades on (Mahr and Nadeem, 2019;Sekerka and Yacobian, 2018;Ali et al, 2015). Christians on the other hand were generally much less likely to report unfair treatment than Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus, and nearly all the unfairness they reported was occasional rather than frequent, which highlights recent research that echoes the contemporary issues of racial discrimination in the workplace (Wall et al, 2017).…”

The most dangerous employees in the workplace

“…Research has shown that perceived manager respect is important in helping employees identify with their work groups (Al-Atwi, 2018) and that managers should take an active role in creating respectful work environments to avoid incivility and to promote equity and inclusion (Sekerka and Yacobian, 2018). The authors’ practical suggestions for moving forward include experiential education, self-awareness training, and setting expectations for behavior.…”