Liverpool Football star Mohamed Salah, who scored 22 Premier League goals this season and got his club the Champions League trophy over the weekend has helped curb Islamophobia in the city, research has suggested.
A study done by Stanford University’s Immigration Policy Lab found that there was 18.9 percent drop in hate crimes in Merseyside since the footballer was signed. The anti-Muslim tweets by Liverpool fans were 53.2% lower than the expected rate (3.4% versus 7.2% of tweets related to Muslims).
“This decline was more extreme than we would expect based on chance alone, and the decrease in hate crimes was more pronounced than the decrease in any other crime category,” the authors of the study wrote. “Taken together, the evidence points to Salah’s rise in prominence causing a decrease in hate crimes in Liverpool F.C.’s home county.”
“By watching games, post-game interviews, promotional videos released by the club, and content on Salah’s social media pages, fans are exposed to rich information about Salah’s life on and off the field,” the researchers wrote. “Viewers see what a Muslim prayer looks like, perhaps for the first time, when Salah scores.”
"The public image of Salah as a hero of sorts, and the resulting normalisation of some Muslim identities practices may have dampened the appetite for harassment and violence toward the city’s Muslims," it added.
The researchers found that the “Salah effect” was real. It is possible for a celebrity from a stigmatized group to actually reduce prejudice toward that group.
