Mick Hartley

The Student Union at the London School of Economics doesn't agree with me (previous post). It believes that "Islamophobia is a form of anti-Islamic racism." And further resolves:

1. To define Islamophobia as “a form of racism expressed through the hatred or fear of Islam, Muslims, or Islamic culture, and the stereotyping, demonisation or harassment of Muslims, including but not limited to portraying Muslims as barbarians or terrorists, or attacking the Qur’an as a manual of hatred”, 

2. To take a firm stance against all Islamophobic incidents at LSE and conduct internal investigations if and when they occur.

The list goes on (pdf).

This was put to the vote at a special meeting on Thursday, called in response to the Jesus and Mo affair: that is, after the LSE Atheist, Secularist and Humanist (ASH) Society, in solidarity with their colleagues at University College, put up a Jesus and Mo cartoon on their Facebook page. This was deemed by the LSE Union to be an "Islamophobic incident".

The Union voted for the motion (339 for, 179 against, 24 undecided).

So now, at one of the UK's leading universities – one with a long history of radical political thought – they've decided that Muslims must not be offended since that would be a form of Islamophobia, ie racism, and that Muslims themselves are free to decide what does and what does not offend them. It's reintroducing, in other words, the concept of blasphemy.

Ophelia Benson:

As one of the ASH people said, they went up against a Union whose sole consistent voting bloc consisted of the far left and Islamic societies. It’s impressive that they got 179 votes against.

I would just add: it’s strange that it’s the “far left” that votes this way, because there is nothing far left about Islamism. It’s as if the far left were voting for fascism…rather as the Stalinist “left” did at the time of the Nazi-Soviet pact.

Well, by now that's a familiar story.

See also The Ministry of Truth:

So, they’re creating their own definition of Islamaphobia and stating that anything that has the ‘effect’ of being Islamophobic will not be tolerated.

So who gets to decide what does, and doesn’t have the ‘effect’ of being Islamophobic?

What’s the test that the Student Union will apply in such cases?

The use of  word ‘effect’ rather seems to imply that they’re thinking in terms of purely subjective test based solely on whether something offends Muslim students, giving them a license to censor any and all criticism that might be directed toward Islam.

It’s bullshit.