Mick Hartley

Those acts are already illegal under existing religious hate crime laws. People have *already* been sentenced for those crimes (I will link below.)

I asked the Minister leading on this work to send me examples of anti-Muslim hate incidents which were not covered by existing law.… https://t.co/GejEoULBck

— Claire Coutinho (@ClaireCoutinho) July 22, 2025

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Full text:

I asked the Minister leading on this work to send me examples of anti-Muslim hate incidents which were not covered by existing law. He has not done so.

Labour don’t know what problem they are trying to fix.

But others pushing this definition do.

Here is what they would like it to cover:

Saying the burqa is oppressive to women.
Using the label ‘Islamist’.
Discussing support for sharia law amongst British Muslims.
Raising concerns about the grooming gangs being predominantly Pakistani Muslims.

Wes, do you think people should be called Islamophobic for the above? Do you think it helps anyone if our institutions are afraid to discuss these topics? Do you think if people lose their jobs or are cancelled for the above, that will do anything to reduce anti-Muslim hate? It will make it worse.

This would be a level of protection no other religion has. It would only cause more division and it would harm the very people it seeks to protect.

Of course anti-Muslim hate is wrong, that’s why we have many laws which already cover violence, harassment and discrimination.

There's the strong suspicion that Labour is pandering to the Muslim vote rather than operating from any genuine concern about anti-Muslim hate. That may well backfire though. Melanie Phillips:

An opinion poll has suggested that if the government brings in a definition of Islamophobia, Reform would gain a 106-seat majority at a general election.

The deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, has appointed a panel to draw up this definition to be applied across the public sector. The poll of 2,000 people, carried out by JL Partners, found that before voters were told about this proposal Reform polled at 29 per cent and Labour at 23 per cent, indicating a Reform majority of 20 at a general election.

However, when respondents were asked how they would vote if Labour brought in a definition of Islamophobia, Reform rose to 30 per cent and Labour fell to 20 per cent, indicating a Reform majority of 106. As the polling company’s founder said, the Islamophobia definition would be like Labour “setting off a tinderbox under what remains of their working-class vote”….

While most British Muslims subscribe to core western values and are exemplary citizens, an unsustainably large minority pose a threat. Of the 43,000 people on MI5’s terror watchlist in 2020, 90 per cent were Islamists. People are acutely aware of the attempt by the governing classes to sanitise, excuse and deny these threats. That’s why there is such fury over the mostly Pakistani Muslim-heritage grooming gangs that raped, pimped and prostituted thousands of young white girls.

Last month, Baroness Casey’s report said that these gangs hadn’t been tackled by the authorities, partly because they’d feared appearing racist. Yet people can see the government is still determined to downplay and brush all this under the carpet. Astonishingly, it even awarded an MBE for “services to integration” and “cohesion” to Muhbeen Hussain, who in 2015 called on fellow Muslims in Rotherham to boycott the police over their “pernicious lie” that they had failed to act on grooming allegations “because of fears of being called racist”. He claimed this was an attempt to “scapegoat” Muslims over the grooming gang scandal….

People have been deeply shocked by the nature and scale of that scandal. It has become a lightning rod for the smouldering rage about immigration, national identity and Islam….

An Islamophobia definition would be a breaking-point because it would be seen as silencing an urgent and legitimate public debate over such matters. That’s because the claim of Islamophobia is designed to stop any criticism of Islam or the Muslim world and, worse still, anything that world decides is insulting or unacceptable.