Tell us who shaped anti-Muslim definition
When a government department starts shredding the evidence behind its decisions, it’s a fair bet that it has something to hide from the public.
In March, the government introduced a non-statutory definition of “anti-Muslim hostility” as a way of weaponising the charge of “Islamophobia” without being seen to do so. Islamophobia is a term introduced by the Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood to silence all criticism of Islam or the Muslim world under the guise of outlawing prejudice.
The government set up a working group which invited people to make submissions aimed at defining Islamophobia. This provoked horror from critics who claimed it would create a blasphemy law by the back door for Islam.
The group eventually scrapped the term “Islamophobia” in favour of “anti-Muslim hostility” in an effort to head off such opposition. The government adopted this definition and is encouraging public, private and charitable bodies to act on it.
Critics claim, however, that this Islamophobia-lite is so vague and subjective that it will still have a chilling effect on free speech. One of those critics, the Conservative Party justice spokesman Nick Timothy, has now discovered through freedom of information requests that Angela Rayner’s communities department has deleted all the submissions made to the working group.
So, public bodies will be deciding whether to take action against “anti- Muslim hostility” by using a slippery definition for which the reasoning has been concealed. Timothy has drawn the reasonable conclusion that the submissions were destroyed to hide the influence by Islamist extremists over the definition’s wording.
The communities department has flatly denied that any extremist groups were involved in the working group’s deliberations. It claims the submissions were destroyed because of the “volume of special category data”, including personal information and data on philosophical and religious beliefs and political opinions, which could only be used by the working group and not be kept for longer than necessary, in line with “data retention rules”.
This Islamophobia-lite could still have a chilling effect on free speech
Pull the other one. “Data retention rules” don’t explain why the department couldn’t name those who had made submissions or whether the working group had been influenced by them.
Timothy says, despite numerous parliamentary questions, ministers refused to confirm or deny whether the working group was influenced by, or even received representations from, Islamist groups such as Mend, Cage or the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB). The government has a “no-contact” policy with these groups on account of their extremism.
Since Mend and the MCB, at least, have long campaigned for a definition of Islamophobia, it beggars belief that they wouldn’t have submitted to the working group their views about its definition. One might wonder, indeed, why the government tolerates any extremist organisations operating freely in Britain.
Hatred of Muslims on account of their religious faith or any discrimination against them is of course wrong. But there are already laws against religious hatred and discrimination. Islamophobia — or whatever sanitised euphemism is used — is a threat to a free society, because it may well silence legitimate and necessary scrutiny of Islamic extremism or reprehensible or threatening behaviour within the Muslim world.
Proof that such concerns were justified didn’t take long to surface.
Within 45 minutes of the new definition being announced, the “Gaza-first” independent MP Iqbal Mohamed asked whether it could be incorporated into the Seven Principles of Public Life — the standards that MPs and other public office holders are expected to follow. This immediately raised the possibility that MPs could be sanctioned for comments made in parliament if they were deemed to constitute “anti-Muslim hostility”.
The Islamophobia claim has been used over the years to stigmatise and intimidate anyone who criticises Muslims or the Islamic world by deeming such expressions to be unacceptable bigotry — even when the claims are truthful and are calling necessary attention to matters of legitimate concern.
This was precisely the treatment meted out to Timothy himself in March when another “Gaza-first” MP, Afzal Khan, accused him of Islamophobia. This was because Timothy had warned, accurately, that the demonstrations of mass Muslim prayer in Trafalgar Square represented the “domination of public places” that was “straight from the Islamist playbook”.
The weaponised charge of Islamophobia has long had a chilling effect on public discourse. As Timothy told Policy Exchange last year, even after all the evidence about the rape and grooming gangs, ministers still refuse to say the obvious — that these were racially and religiously aggravated crimes by mostly Muslim men against non-Muslim children.
Jonathan Hall, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, has said Islamists control whole wings of prisons, with officers afraid to intervene “because of the ... fear of discriminating against Muslim prisoners”. Meanwhile, a teacher from Batley is still in hiding more than five years after showing caricatures of Muhammad to a class during a lesson on free speech Self-censorship is bad enough. But now there has been government censorship of the process by which that self-censorship is to be turned into outright submission.
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