The current hysteria about Islamophobia represents an attack on free speech and democratic debate.

Islamism is a legitimate target for criticism -attacking Muslims is not!!

In recent times the term Islamophobia has become an important medium for expressing intolerance towards the exercise of free expression and of free speech. Under the guise of protecting the Muslim community from intolerance, Islamophobia seeks to legitimate intolerance towards those who hold critical views about the ideology of Islamism.

Advocates of the use of the term Islamophobia are committed to the criminalisation of views and verbal acts that criticise Islamism. That the policing of such critical views has become institutionalised is demonstrated by the scandalous approach of the police towards the controversy surrounding the statement made by Tory MP Lee Anderson.

Lee Anderson’s supposed crime was his statement that asserted that Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, was controlled by Islamists. Groups of identity entrepreneurs swiftly accused Anderson of Islamophobia. A media led campaign of hysteria about his statement led to a frenzy of headlines claiming that Britain was in the throes of a Conservative Party orchestrated campaign of Islamophobia. To their shame the Tory leadership suspended Anderson from the Conservative Party. The punishing of Anderson was not enough for the opponents of the Conservative Party. Since this incident they have constantly demanded that this party takes action to deal with Islamophobia within its ranks.

Supporters of the crusade against Islamophobia insisted that everyone was obliged to take sides. In their view those members of the Tory Party who refused to condemn Anderson’s statement were no less guilty of a cultural crime than the man himself. Some have demanded that the government passes a law to make Islamophobia illegal.

The Muslim Council of Britain wrote to the chair of the Conservative Party to call for an inquiry into this organisation’s ‘structural Islamophobia’. For identity entrepreneurs the coupling of the word ‘structural’ or ‘institutional’ deepens the threat posed by a cultural crime.

What is particularly chilling about the crusade targeting Islamophobia is that it managed to recruit the police to pile in and join the action.  It was reported that the Metropolitan Police is assessing a report of hate speech made against Lee Anderson. The implication of this development is that Anderson could face a police investigation for his remarks about Sadiq Khan. Scotland Yard stated that they were “assessing” a report made by an unknown complainant the day after he made the remarks, which opponents described as Islamophobic!

That the Metropolitan Police are now in the business of assessing the statement of a senior democratically elected politician is bad enough. What is even worse is that this important step towards the politicisation of the British police did not provoke a public outcry. These days the mere invocation of the term Islamophobia serves to shut down discussion and debate. Even the most hesitant expression of support for Anderson’s statement is met with a mob-like reaction. Take the case of the TV personality Richard Madley. He faced calls to be sacked from his post on the programme Good Morning Britain. His supposed crime was not to voice support for Anderson but for reading out some messages of support for Anderson’s statement by viewers of the programme during the course of a discussion of his statement. It appears that even the airing of supportive sentiments for Anderson by members of the public is now treated by some as verboten.

Islamophobia is a term invented by identity entrepreneurs determined to vilify any criticism of the religion of Islam or the ideology of Islamism.

Islamophobia is an inherently ideological concept whose objective is to expand the meaning of racism to the point that it encompasses legitimate criticism and attack of a religion, or an ideology associated with Islamism. There have been numerous attempts in Britain to legitimate intolerance of criticism of Islam. In 1997, the usage of the term Islamophobia was boosted by the publication of a report by The Runnymede Trust’s ‘Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia’, titled Islamophobia: a Challenge for Us All. The authors of this report described Islamophobia as an ‘unfounded hostility towards Islam’.

The usage of the phrase ‘unfounded hostility towards Islam’ is a self-serving one. It is unlikely that its authors would have no objections towards a ‘well-founded hostility to Islam’. In any case the ideal of tolerance accepted by democratic societies does not insist that only well-founded statement ought to be tolerated. The principle of tolerance demands that even statements that are deemed to be totally ill-founded and wrong ought to be tolerated. However, the very point of inventing this term is to ensure that criticism of Islam falls outside the scope of toleration. As the commentator Tim Black noted, Islamophobia ‘has served as a way to impede and restrict freedom of thought and speech. It acts, effectively, as a form of Islamic blasphemy law’.

The Runnymede Trust’s definition of Islamophobia was bad enough. What’s even worse and far more confusing is the definition adopted in 2018 by the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on British Muslims. This group of parliamentarians defined ‘Islamophobia’ in a bizarre and expansive manner as a ‘type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness’. Virtually the entire British political class and all the main parties have adopted this definition and have become complicit in the practice of criminalising the criticism of Islam.

The term Muslimness serves as a warrant for treating literally any manifestation of unease with or the questioning of anything to do with the Muslim world and its cultural practices as Islamophobic. Opponents of the application of Sharia law on British soil, critics of the mandatory wearing of hijab or the flying of the Palestinian flag can all be accused of targeting Muslimness. If Muslimness means anything then it must refer to the domain of cultural practices. However, hostility to a manifestation of a particular culture has nothing to do with racism. At most such a sentiment might be characterised as ethnocentric but certainly not racist. The aim of the APPG definition is to frame any form of negative reaction to Islam as a new variant of racism.

Racism towards cultural practices may be an irrational formulation but once this idea has been embraced by the political establishment, it has become a fact of life. Consequently, teachers in schools, curators in art galleries and public figures have all got to dance around anything to do with Muslim culture in case they get charged with being Islamophobic. The APPG was in no doubt that the traditional norms of free speech did not apply to critics of Muslimness. In its intervention it went so far as to insist that there should be ‘appropriate limits to free speech’ to empower the policing of Islamophobia and for the policing and regulation of matters ‘far beyond what can be captured as criminal acts’.

In plain English, regulating matters that are deemed neither illegal or criminal represents a violation of the rule law. What’s the point in enacting legal norms if the police can exercise its power to supress activities that do not violate the law?

Since the turn of the 21^st century sections of the cultural elites, media commentators, NGOs and advocates of identity politics have succeeded in endowing the term Islamophobia with cultural power. Is it any surprise that Islamists have also adopted the term to dismiss and supress the arguments of their critics. That is why, support for Israel and criticism of radical Islamism is often greeted with the accusation of Islamophobia.

The fear of provoking this accusation is in part responsible for the silence that prevented a serious public discussion of the trafficking of young girls by criminal gangs of Muslim men in places like Rotherham. The fear of being accused of Islamophobia means that public figures have adopted the practice of using euphemisms when referring to outrages committed by such criminal gangs. That is why the current discussion around the subject of the threat to the security of Members of Parliament and other public figures self-consciously avoids mentioning the kind of people who are the source of this problem. In this way Islamist activists are given a free ride by a political establishment that fears provoking their wrath.

There is something dishonest about the usage of the term Islamophobia. It conflates the legitimate criticism of the ideology of Islamism with the act of racism against Muslim people. Yet it is possible to object to Islamism and even many of the cultural practices of the religion of Islam without bearing any animosity towards Muslim people. Indeed millions of Muslim people have adopted a lifestyle that runs counter to the Islamist ethos.

It is worth noting that supporters of Islamophobia mongering continually assert that their hatred towards Zionism has nothing to do with antisemitism. In principle, they are right to argue that hatred towards the ideology of Zionism should not be equated with racism towards Jewish people. Yet, the distinction between an ideology and a people has become totally eradicated in the case of Islamophobia. From their perspective the dislike of Islamism is indistinguishable from racism towards Muslim people.

Anti-Islamism is no less legitimate than anti-Zionism. This point was well made by the philosopher Richard Dawkins when he stated that:

‘Islamophobia is an otiose word which doesn’t deserve definition. Hatred of Muslims is unequivocally reprehensible, as is hatred of any group of people such as gay people or members of a race. Hatred of Islam, on the other hand is easily justified, as is hatred of any other religion or obnoxious ideology.

There is some truth in the comment attributed to the late Christopher Hitchens which stated that ‘Islamophobia is a word created by fascists and used by cowards to manipulate morons’. Unfortunately, the cowards that Hitchens referred to constitute a significant section of society’s cultural and political elites. They have embraced this otiose word in order to evade confronting a threat that they don’t wish to recognise.

Throughout Western Europe the elevation of Islamophobia into a threat to society is used to avoid a public discussion of the forces promoting the Islamisation of society. It is not sensitivity to a new form of racism but political cowardice that is responsible for hysteria surrounding Lee Anderson’s statement. Tragically this display of political cowardice only encourages the enemies of freedom to raise the stakes to demand that the slightest hint of disrespect towards Islamism be treated as an act of sacrilege. Those who do not wish to encourage the ascendancy of a theocratic political culture should have the courage to expose the threat posed by the perpetrators of the fiction of Islamophobia.

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