Mick Hartley

Freddie Attenborough in the Spectator on ‘Islamophobia’ and the grooming gangs scandal:

At PMQs this week, Kemi Badenoch told MPs that Labour’s adoption of the All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslim’s definition of ‘Islamophobia’ has inhibited public discussion of rape gangs. She pointed out that, according to this definition, anyone who draws attention to the over-representation of Muslims in the grooming gangs is guilty of Islamophobia. This, she argued, is why some members of the Parliamentary Labour Party have been ‘scared to tell the truth’. She’s right, but the problem runs deeper than that…

At the time, the report was criticised for defining Islamophobia too broadly. For instance, it says ‘claims of Muslims spreading Islam by the sword’ are an example of ‘classic Islamophobia’. By that definition, Tom Holland’s book on the history of Islam – In the Shadow of the Sword – is Islamophobic. Another example the report gives is accusing Muslim majority countries of exaggerating or inventing claims of genocide perpetrated against Muslims. That would make anyone who disputes Iran’s description of Israel’s military operation in Gaza as ‘genocide’ an Islamophobe – including, ironically, Sir Keir Starmer.

The history books will clearly need to be rewritten to avoid any possible accusation of Islamophobia. And our political discourse must likewise be cleansed of wrong-think. 

These concerns have been brought into sharp focus in the past week because the APPG report gives the example of ‘grooming gangs’ as a ‘subtle form of anti-Muslim racism’. 

In the past, this has led to people who’ve drawn attention to the overrepresentation of Muslim men in grooming gangs being branded Islamophobic, even though we have good evidence of that.

The threat to freedom of speech could hardly be clearer. This is precisely the same mentality that led to the rape gangs cover-up in the first place.

In light of the chilling effect the APPG definition of Islamophobia has had on discussion of the rape gangs, is it time to consign this term to the history books? As Christopher Hitchens said: ‘It is a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons.’

As has been said often enough, this is introducing a blasphemy law by the back door. Islam isn't a race; it's a religion, an ideology. The problem lies in the Muslim belief that Islam is not just something you believe in, but forms an essential part of your being – hence the seriousness of apostasy. For them, then, the term "Islamophobia" is equivalent to racism in that the belief is inseparable from the person. But that's no reason to accept those terms here, where freedom of speech has been fought for over generations, and remains central to our democracy.