The long campaign to brand Britain Islamophobic has distorted politics
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Like the protests against The Satanic Verses 35 years ago, today’s rolling anti-Israel demonstrations will come to be seen as a staging post in British politics. The late 1980s was when the public first noticed political Islam in Britain. The past few months were when they noticed that the politics of Islam has changed the way we are governed forever.
The Rochdale by-election – fought, like the Batley by-election three years ago, on sectarian lines about events in other countries on distant continents – is but a detail amid a greater shift in our society. In Batley, Labour played the sectarian game and won. In Rochdale, they lost their own candidate because of his prejudice, before losing to their former MP who, Rishi Sunak noted on Friday night in an address to the nation, “denies the horror of what happened on October 7… glorifies Hezbollah and is endorsed by Nick Griffin, the racist former leader of the British National Party”.
Sunak on Friday night also demanded that officers stop merely “managing” the protests, and start “policing” them instead. No wonder. At the protests thus far, so vast are the crowds, and so open the hatred and incitement on display, that public order policing has been shown to be completely hollow. On one hand the police say there is insufficient evidence of serious public disorder to ban the marches. On the other, they refuse to arrest protesters for blatant criminal offences because they worry that confrontation would spark wider disorder.
If such policing is a very British hypocrisy, events in Parliament reflect a very British complacency. The week before last, by the admission of all involved, the House of Commons was bullied into submission by Islamists. By tearing up the rule book, and allowing a Labour amendment calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, the Speaker surrendered to the thugs who intimidate and threaten MPs who refuse to vote as they demand.
Yet within days, it was as if nothing had happened. Following comments that were indeed prejudiced from Lee Anderson, the former Tory deputy chairman, the story was turned completely. Anderson had said Islamists “have got control of Khan… they’ve got control of Starmer… this stems with Khan, he’s given our capital city away to his mates”.
This could only be interpreted to mean that Khan is an Islamist, or that, as a Muslim, he must be allied to Islamists. While Khan’s leadership of London is a failure, and the passivity of the Met before the demonstrations a disgrace, this was too much. Anderson had the Conservative whip removed the next day, and Rishi Sunak issued a statement condemning “an emerging pattern which should not be tolerated”, adding: “in Parliament this week a very dangerous signal was sent that… intimidation works”.
The response was hysterical. Commentators demanded that Sunak must use the word “Islamophobia”. Labour politicians condemned him for refusing to sign up to a loaded definition of the term. The Muslim Council of Britain – banned from contact with government – called for an inquiry into “structural Islamophobia” in the Conservative Party.
The MCB’s supposed evidence included Suella Braverman’s statement that the Speaker’s surrender meant that “the Islamists, the extremists and the anti-Semites are in charge now”. This, claimed the MCB, was a “well-trodden Islamophobic path”. Another was a column I had written in this newspaper, in which I called, among other things, for the criminalisation of Sharia marriages, which leave many Muslim women in Britain without legal rights.
As these examples show, the concept of Islamophobia is not only designed to protect Muslims from discrimination and hatred. It is designed to protect Islam – and no other religion – from criticism, to shield Islamists from scrutiny, and to shut down debate about the social and political issues that matter to them.
Like followers of other faiths, Muslims are already protected from discrimination and hatred in law. The Government explains that “a hate crime is any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice based on… a person’s religion or perceived religion”.
But the attempt to define Islamophobia, and to push the whole of society to accept the definition, goes much further. The official definition – accepted by the Labour Party and swathes of the public sector – was devised by the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on British Muslims in 2018. It says: “Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.”
The APPG report that launched the definition appeared to suggest that its purpose is to protect Islam from criticism. The report quotes an academic who had written: “Criticisms directed against Muslims often entail (at least implicitly) criticisms against Islam and criticisms directed against Islam are often simply tools for criticising Muslims. Anti-Islamism is not the same as anti-Muslimism, but the two are intimately connected and both can be considered constitutive parts of Islamophobia.” The report agrees, stating: “That is why the term Islamophobia is not just theoretically sound, but also practically convenient.”
Any perceived criticism of Islam and Islamic practices, it seems, is then deemed Islamophobic, and should therefore be forbidden. Borrowing from American critical race theory, the concept’s inventors explain that Islamophobia is “more broadly encompassing” than hatred, because it is “embedded” in invisible “social structures”. This conveniently removes the burden of providing hard evidence for accusations of Islamophobia.
Inevitably, Britain is declared guilty. Our country, the report says, is an “Islamophobic environment”. And perhaps that would be true, if one were so blinkered as to believe the examples it provides really are Islamophobic. The examples are included to demonstrate the “breadth of Islamophobia in our society”, and declare each of them unacceptable acts – punishable perhaps in law one day, but punishable in the meantime by cancellation, intimidation and death threats. The Batley teacher who during a blasphemy lesson showed his pupils a depiction of Muhammed has been in hiding now for almost three years.
One example of unacceptable behaviour is given as the use of “symbols and images associated with classic Islamophobia” such as “claims of Muslims spreading Islam by the sword or subjugating minority groups under their rule”. As the historian Tom Holland notes, to accept that this can no longer be said is to deny the history of Islam – and endanger the lives of those who study the faith and its history. It would also contradict the hadith – believed to be a saying of Muhammed – that “the gates of Paradise lie in the shadow of the sword”.
Another example given is accusations against Muslims of “inventing or exaggerating… genocide against Muslims”. So to dispute, as even Labour does, that Israeli military action in Gaza amounts to a “genocide” is to be Islamophobic. Another is “accusing Muslim citizens of being more loyal to the ‘Ummah’… than to the interests of their own nations”. This is a key tenet of Islamist beliefs and the teachings of Sayyid Qutb and Abul A’la Maududi.
Other examples will inevitably be abused. Prohibiting claims “that the existence of an independent Palestine or Kashmir is a terrorist endeavour” – something I have never heard – will be used to prevent calling Hamas a terrorist organisation. Stopping people making “claims of a demographic ‘threat’ posed by Muslims” will shut down discussion about projections that could see some European countries become Muslim majority by the end of the century. Declaring it Islamophobic to allege “Muslim entryism in politics, government or other societal institutions” will prevent the exposure of entryism by Islamists – an established method by the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates.
Indeed, the attempt to impose this definition of Islamophobia on society originates with this method. The predecessor to the APPG on British Muslims was the APPG on Islamophobia, which was wound up in 2017. It had been supported by a campaign group called iEngage until 2011, when MPs cut ties with iEngage over concerns about its support for extremists. Just as the APPG morphed into a new form, so iEngage relaunched, in 2014, as Muslim Engagement and Development – or MEND. But the links with extremism continued. Some staff members were exposed as extremists, and MEND attacked liberal Muslims and defended and promoted extremists such as Raed Salah and the pro-terrorist organisation CAGE.
MEND is of concern to the police and security services. According to Mak Chishty, a former Met Commander, if we do not confront it, “we risk having our safety and security threatened”. According to Sir Mark Rowley, now Met Commissioner, MEND seeks “to undermine the state’s considerable efforts to tackle all hate crime”. Privately, even Yvette Cooper insists that Labour has a policy of non-engagement with the organisation.
Yet MEND has, in the words of Sir John Jenkins, who reviewed the role of the Muslim Brotherhood in Britain, “exerted an important intellectual influence” on the definition of Islamophobia. Officially, it has been kept away from the work, but its own proposals have influenced the APPG definition, and the APPG report thanks a former MEND policy analyst, Dr Antonio Perra, for his contribution. Indeed Dr Perra has been described in evidence to Parliament as the “co-editor” of the report. The APPG also draws on evidence received from the Islamophobia Response Unit – an organisation set up by MEND in 2017.
MEND is behind another organisation called Muslim Vote, which is trying to organise the millions of Muslim voters in Britain to vote out MPs who did not vote for a ceasefire in Gaza – and which has undoubtedly stoked up threats against elected politicians. The campaign is led by an activist called Muhammad Jalal, who was previously the UK leader of now banned terrorist organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir between 2000 and 2007.
In addition to a variety of minor organisations – which themselves employ some staffers with records of anti-Semitism online – the Muslim Vote campaign is also supported by the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB). This was described by a government review of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2015 as “the Muslim Brotherhood in the UK”, and links with the Brotherhood are something its past leaders have openly admitted.
The review explained: “For some years the Muslim Brotherhood shaped the new Islamic Society of Britain (ISB), dominated the Muslim Association of Britain and played an important role in establishing and then running the Muslim Council of Britain.” The MCB has itself stated that both the ISB and MAB are “founding affiliates”.
Despite these connections, the MCB plays a cynically skilful game of identity corporatism. It speaks the language of human rights and pluralism, has a female general secretary, and produces guides on eco-friendly mosques and making Ramadan plastic-free. It claims to represent more than 500 member organisations, including mosques, schools, charities and professional networks. If anybody questions its actions, it claims they want to deny Muslims their democratic voice.
The MCB does not publish its list of members, but from organisations that work closely with it, like Green Lane Mosque in Birmingham, or those that confirm membership, like the East London Mosque, we can get a flavour of the culture. East London Mosque published special condolences upon the death of the hate preacher Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who praised Hitler and talked about killing “Allah’s enemies, the Jews”. At Green Lane Mosque, Sheikh Zakaullah Saleem gave a sermon explaining the correct way to stone a woman to death.
By not confirming its relationship with these mosques, the MCB can avoid supporting or condemning examples of such extremism. Yet despite the availability of open-source material showing these institutions for what they are, many of these mosques and Islamic centres are partners of the British state – local councils, the police, the NHS – and recipients of millions in public funding, for services from youth support to community healthcare.
Despite the government ban on engagement with the MCB, the state gives the organisation legitimacy and even public funds. The Ministry of Defence has used the MCB to appoint imams in the military. The police have worked with leading figures from the MCB, such as Mohammed Kozbar, the chairman of Finsbury Park Mosque who praised Hamas as “martyrs of the resistance”. In 2022 more than three quarters of funding for the MCB Charitable Foundation, £326,000, came through Kickstart, a government scheme to get young people into work by part-funding salary costs. The MCB uses the Charitable Foundation to run its Centre for Media Monitoring, which seeks to pressure the media into accepting MCB narratives, including the very concept of Islamophobia.
Many organisations use our liberal system to achieve anti-liberal ends. Yet drawing these linkages and exposing the truth is, according to the definition of Islamophobia and its published examples, Islamophobic. Which very neatly demonstrates how the whole exercise is a modern-day witch trial. We can choose to accept a definition of Islamophobia, which amounts in effect to a one-religion blasphemy law and special protection for Islamists, or we can reject it – and be found automatically guilty of an offence for which some extremists would threaten to kill us.
This is a significant danger. Three-quarters of live MI5 cases follow subjects motivated by Islamist ideology. We know terrorists are sometimes sparked to action by perceived insults to their faith and kindred. David Amess, the late Conservative MP, was murdered by an Islamist. Then as now MPs did what they could to avoid reality, and chose instead to blame a culture of incivility on social media.
Our institutions and public spaces form the battleground. The shows of strength through protest on the streets – and unchallenged hatred and criminality by many protesters – are tactics used in the struggle. So too are the mass Islamic prayers held on the streets, and the fights – in schools and colleges and elsewhere – for space to be given over for ritualistic prayer. As Ed Husain explains in his book The Islamist, the “total Islamization of the public space at college (open prayers, Islamist posters, women in hijab)” is an expression of power and intimidation, of staff, other pupils and other Muslims. In schools, colleges and universities, across the public sector and now even in Parliament, the story is one of co-ordinated intimidation met with surrender.
We must fight back. Ministers should stop being coy and make the intellectual case against the Islamophobia definition. They should be more explicit about their policy of non-engagement with the MCB, and name extremist organisations so others know who to avoid. They should update the Muslim Brotherhood Review of 2015 with a new report. They should invite leaders and moderate religious figures from the Middle East and at home to play their part in a kind of counter-reformation against the Salafist and Deobandi spirit that has radicalised much of Muslim life worldwide.
And they should lead with word and deed. Thoughtful, intelligent speeches matter to leadership. Ministers should begin a conversation with British Muslims about what it means to live as a citizen in modern Britain while remaining true to their faith. But ministers must do so honestly, and stop compromising with the Islamists and grievance peddlers who seek to dominate this conversation.
For these extremists want to define normative Islam in a hardline way, and they want to define the relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims as zero-sum, a them-and-us confrontation. At least in one respect they are correct: this is a them-and-us situation. But we have allowed them to draw the line between the two sides for too long. The divide must not be Muslim versus non-Muslim, but between those who accept the full reality of life in a pluralistic society and those who do not – between those who accept and love Britain for all it is, and those who want to turn it into a harsh and narrow theocracy that would be rejected by the overwhelming majority.
Those on the right side of this divide should be supported with all we have. But those who choose to put themselves on the wrong side should be treated as harshly as we would any other fascist – for religious fascists is what these extremists are. And we should pursue a policy of aggressive opposition not only to extremism but to domestic separatism.
Most immediately, the marches against Israel should be banned. The police inaction before blatant criminality is evidence enough that the threshold to ban them has been reached. If the Met refuses to accept this, the “new robust framework” that the Prime Minister promised on Friday night should change the law to allow ministers to ban marches in certain circumstances without reference to chief constables, including, for example, when ongoing marches repeatedly disrupt our shared life and cost the public purse too much.
The police and Crown Prosecution Service must be made to uphold the law, but the law should be tightened to clamp down on incitement, hate speech and extremism. Public sector engagement with extremist organisations must be driven out – with serious repercussions for those who refuse to respect policy. Mr Sunak must be held to his vow that “no extremist organisations or individuals are being lent legitimacy by their interactions with central government”. There should also be a register of imams and mosques, with unacceptable behaviour leading to preaching bans and closures.
We must shut down TV channels that broadcast hatred. Charities that promote extremist beliefs should be closed down. Foreigners who spread Islamist ideology should be deported immediately without appeal. The burqa should be banned in public places, and the hijab banned for school children. Islamic supplementary schools should be investigated and regulated properly. The dual jurisdiction of our national law and Sharia law must end, with Sharia marriages criminalised. Public funding for mosques and Islamic centres must cease. When new mosques are built, they must be without minarets and in a way that is sympathetic to the surrounding architecture.
Inevitably this prospectus will be too robust for many liberals, but it is the only way to save pluralistic values. Our response to separatism and sectarianism must be swift and muscular. Yet for many mainstream politicians, ignorance, fear and timidity – and a misplaced progressive desire to protect minorities – all fuel appeasement. For others the motives are more cynical. Some Labour politicians are playing a game of equivalence following their own anti-Semitism scandals. And some, for electoral reasons, have undoubtedly chosen to ride the Islamist tiger.
The danger is it will be not just them who end up eaten, but all of us – and Conservatives have a duty to act.
