Mick Hartley

From the Times.

Forcing universities to comply with definitions of Islamophobia could lead to breaches of free speech laws, academics have suggested.

You think?

Steven Greer, emeritus professor of human rights at Bristol University and research director at the Oxford Institute for British Islam, said he was driven out of Bristol after being falsely accused of Islamophobia.

He said: “None of the dozen or so definitions of Islamophobia has yet achieved any consensus and it is very doubtful if any official, non-statutory definition will fare any better. The concept itself is too vague and elusive.

“The solution to the problem of anti-Muslim hatred and discrimination lies in the effective enforcement of existing laws against hatred and minority discrimination and not in non-statutory definitions crafted for any specific minority.”

He said the panel drawing up the proposed definition had been drawn from a very narrow spectrum of opinion and that it had been difficult for interested parties to make submissions to the working group.

Greer added: “Based on the apparent assumption that any criticism of Muslims and Islam is ‘Islamophobic’, I was wrongly accused of Islamophobia simply for referring students to the academic literature on Islam and human rights.”

As has been said often enough, "Islamophobia" is a nonsense concept anyway, and Labour's proposed new definition could effectively introduce the offence of blasphemy into the UK by the back door. It elides the protection of individuals from hatred with the protection of ideas from scrutiny. We already have laws to deal with the former: we don't need any new laws to deal with the latter.

A case in point:

An Islamic radio station fined for broadcasting hate speech against Jews has accused Ofcom of Islamophobia.

Salaam BCR, a community radio station, included a speech by a radical imam denouncing Jews as “the biggest enemies of humanity” during its broadcast to the Muslim community of Bury in Urdu and English. The station is run by the charity Markaz Al-Huda.

MPs and campaigners have warned that the incident is an example of the risk the government will create by introducing an official definition of Islamophobia, arguing that it will shut down the ability to punish Islamic-extremist rhetoric.

At 2pm on October 17, 2023 — ten days after Hamas killed about 1,200 people in Israel — the station broadcast a 38-minute speech by the radical imam Shujauddin Sheikh. He had delivered it to an audience outside the Karachi Press Club in Pakistan five days earlier.

Sheikh said of Jewish people: “Their history is from killing prophets to only protecting their own interests, to instigating war, to instigating war and then lending money with interest and strengthening their economy, to achieving a bigger purpose for themselves and a very big reason for that is for their vision of a ‘Greater Israel’.”

Ofcom fined the station £3,500, concluding: “This broadcast contained antisemitic hate speech and abusive and derogatory statements, which were potentially highly offensive and not justified by the context.”

In response, Markaz Al-Huda handed back the station’s Ofcom licence and accused the regulator of being a “puppet instrument heavily run and supportive of a Zionist agenda which makes [it] a discriminative and Islamophobic organisation”.

Markaz Al-Huda is now being reviewed by the Charity Commission over its remarks. It was reported to the charity watchdog by the National Secular Society.

Megan Manson, the society’s head of campaigns, said: “Ofcom was right to sanction this group. These comments, broadcast within days of the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, were antisemitic in the extreme and could have contributed to the division and hate crime in the wake of that attack.

“We urge the Charity Commission to take an equally robust stance on this charity and ensure it cannot publish hateful or divisive sermons in the future — even if that means removing the charity from its register. Charities must never be permitted to be exploited by extremists.

“That this charity responded to Ofcom’s concerns by calling the regulator ‘Islamophobic’ also demonstrates the pitfalls of trying to create an official definition of ‘Islamophobia’. Regulators trying to protect the public must not be hindered by fears of such accusations.”

MPs and campaigners have warned that the extremist broadcast exposes the real-world risk of the government’s plans to introduce a new Islamophobia definition.