For a precious few decades, we in the west enjoyed a liberal consensus. The overwhelming majority of us had accepted that we should be free to speak and act as we wish so long as we adhere to the rule of law and not violate the rights of others. But since the early 2010s, culture warriors have successfully managed to destabilise this consensus. This has been achieved not through a process of persuasion, but largely through linguistic chicanery.
The term ‘Islamophobia’ is a case in point. Few of us would tolerate the abuse of citizens for their belief in Islam, the vandalism of mosques, or physical attacks on those who are identifiably Muslim. We are right to condemn all such behaviour, and to support freedom of belief and worship. This is the essence of a secular democracy.
And yet those of us who maintain that the belief system of Islam is essentially wrong, that the veiling of women is rooted in misogyny, and that no religious icon should be ring-fenced from ridicule, are often dismissed as ‘Islamophobic’. This is to conflate the actions of bigots and criminals with those who are simply exercising their right to criticise ideas. It is linguistic sleight-of-hand. And it works.
The U.K. Government is currently considering how to tackle so-called ‘Islamophobia’, which should come as no surprise given that the Labour Party seems to be waging an open war against free speech. Having already jettisoned the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act – a bill that had been thoroughly debated in parliament and had received cross-party support – Labour has moved on to targeting online speech. Meanwhile, judges are openly imposing draconian prison terms for speech-crimes in order to “set an example”. These are dark times for liberty.
So what will the criminalisation of ‘Islamophobia’ mean? If it is to tackle vandalism, assault, or harassment of Muslims, then its proponents should rest assured that such actions are already illegal. To understand what the Labour party is considering, we need to examine the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG)’s definition of ‘Islamophobia’, a variation of which is likely to be adopted by the current government in future legislation. A report by the APPG in November 2018 put it this way:
Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.
The definition is factually wrong. Islam is a belief-system, not a race. There are over two billion Muslims in the world, and they belong to multiple ethnicities. To criticise Islam is to criticise an idea, not a racial demographic. If we wish to live in a free society, that means we must retain the right to reject or embrace ideologies as we see fit. We don’t criminalise ‘Christianophobia’ or ‘Marxistophobia’ or ‘Freemarketcapitalismophobia’, so why should we do so when it comes to Islam?
The conflation of race and belief is, of course, a strategic means to silence dissent. Most of us in the west have reached the consensus that racism is an intolerable evil. And so by making criticism of Islam akin to racial hatred, we implicitly render such criticism an act of bigotry. This is why so many intersectional campaigners are silent on the treatment of women in Islamic theocracies. While western activists are claiming that the veil is empowering, courageous women in Iran are throwing off these oppressive garments and dancing in the streets. This is in spite of the risks of imprisonment and violence by the ‘morality police’.
The term ‘Islamophobia’, like many other ‘phobias’, is an attempt to pathologise perfectly legitimate points of view. It is similar to the claim that anyone who opposes same-sex marriage is “homophobic” or that anyone who believes that women are entitled to single-sex spaces is ‘transphobic’. As a tactic, it’s about as sophisticated as saying: “Oh, don’t pay any attention to him. He’s a nutcase”.
The term ‘Islamophobia’ apparently dates back as early as 1910, when it appeared in the French form islamophobie in an essay by Alain Quellien. It was popularised in the 1970s by Iranian Islamic fundamentalists. Like all ideologues, they understood that cultural revolutions are best achieved through the control of language and definitions.
Those who struggle to convince others to join their cause often take this alternative approach. They simply redefine words so that people end up supporting their side without realising it. This is precisely the method that had led so many liberal-minded people to promote ‘woke’ causes, even though they represent the precise opposite of liberal values. It’s also why people who fully understand that human beings cannot change sex are nonetheless parroting the slogan: “trans women are women.”
The propagation of the term ‘Islamophobia’ works in much the same way. It prevents open discussion about Islamic beliefs by stigmatising those who participate. We saw this explicitly when the European Court of Human Rights agreed with a court in Austria that criticism of the Prophet Mohammed was “beyond the permissible limits of an objective debate”. As Qanta Ahmed pointed out in the Spectator, this was offensive to Muslims because it infantilised them. It implied that they should be treated like children who are prone to violent tantrums when insulted.
In criminalising criticism and ridicule of Islam, the U.K. Government would effectively be asserting that Muslims are second-class citizens who need to be protected from the realities of life in a pluralistic society. Would this not be a violation of their own law? Could the implementation of a law against ‘Islamophobia’ itself be an act of Islamophobia? These are dizzying possibilities that remind us that the state should never attempt to control the speech or thoughts of its citizens.
Enough of the word games. Islam is not a race. Its disciples are not entitled to a life free from offence. Anti-Muslim hatred and prejudice exists and ought to be criticised, but it is not the same as the mockery or the denunciation of a religious creed. Any legislation against ‘Islamophobia’ would be tantamount to a new form of blasphemy law. In a supposedly free society, this cannot be tolerated.
Andrew Doyle is a writer, comedian and broadcaster who hosts the GB News show Free Speech Nation. He is the author of Free Speech and Why It Matters and The New Puritans. He created satirical Left-wing activist Titania McGrath, whose two books are Woke: A Guide to Social Justice and My First Little Book of Intersectional Activism. This article was first published on his Substack. You can subscribe here.
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Indeed as always the corruption and abuse of language is a key tool of our enemies.
I disagree with the author’s assessment that things were rosy until the 2010s. UK Race Relations Act 1965: The Act also created the offence of “incitement to racial hatred”.
Reminds me of JSO. It’s not like there aren’t already laws to prevent a bunch of nut jobs blocking the highway. Reality was, the Police seemed to agree with them, just like they did when a gang of race baiters toppled the {historic} statue in Bristol.
It is easy to see that the JSO useful idiots don’t get swooped down on and imprisoned within 48 hours because they are actually batting for the same team as the government and their phony climate change agenda.
The problem to solve is not what people say about Islam. If it cannot tolerate criticism it’s believers have no pls e in the West.
The problem is the believers in Islam.
While many Muslims may spend most of their time trying to get better conditions for their family too many are primarily focused on the literal words of their faith. They accept and believe in what their politicised elders and preachers tell them.
The social relativists among the elites either know what they are doing and hope the religious wars will give them absolute power or else they are fanaticists. If they believe multiculturalism can include Islam they are deranged.
I have for some years believed that islam has no place in the West. It is a creed which ultimately wants to destroy the West and its peoples. Extensive damage to the modern world has already occurred as a result of importing this barbarism. The best we can hope for is to contain it and quickly. If we do put a stop to it from there we can seek to roll it back. Failure will mean the death of civilisation and a return to a crude, miserable, feudal existence. Time is short.
As if to endorse your second sentence, as of 2017 there were 2006 mosques in UK, up from 1,700 in the 1990s. In the same year, 6.3% of the UK (4m) were Muslim. At the start of the 20th century, 13% of the Middle East were Christian. It’s currently less than 5%. Considering Christianity originated in the Middle East, and Islam is a relatively new import, the direction of travel is plain to see.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong or strange about being opposed to your local community ending up like this. Maybe people have come from far and wide to take part in whatever celebration this is and it doesn’t give a true representation of the place, but it is Bradford so I’m not overly optimistic;
”Bradford, England.
Also known as Bradfordistan.
Is this what our ancestors thought their streets would look like? They have all been betrayed.”
https://x.com/BFirstParty/status/1835755634509095135
Lancashire here. Can’t see many women, mind. Do they never attend these festivals as families or do the women just get left at home all the time?;
”Nelson is a town and civil parish in the Borough of Pendle in Lancashire, England.
White British have already become a minority here at just 44% of the local population.”
https://x.com/BFirstParty/status/1835959427955904828
I read ‘Londonistan’ by Melanie Phillips a decade ago. A salutary (unheeded) warning. I hail from Burnley (a stone’s throw from Nelson) and saw the direction of travel/replacement begin to become apparent in the early 60s. I understand that the Working Mens’ Club next door to where I grew up in now a Mosque.
You are spot on. Mahomet’s cult is the anti-thesis of Christianity and civilisation. It is a satanic death cult.
The third world fellows don’t dig diversity!
Actually they don’t dig much of our culture and traditions so I will quote Mr Steyn….’Diversity is where cultures go to die’.
Nations go to die even!
Good grief, how to know you’ve been well and truly Islamized…Conductors on trains too scared to check tickets of foreign-looking passengers ( they probably mean anyone who looks like they might be a Muslim ) in case they get stabbed. Seriously, WTF? Just carry some pepper spray, if anyone wants to cause trouble or doesn’t have a ticket the conductor/train driver should ring ahead for the transport police to be waiting at the next station to nab them. All trains have CCTV. I can’t believe it’s come to this. What’s the reverse of ‘Islamophobia’?? Because that’s the real problem. Ask the Pakistani rape gangs;
”German train conductors in the state of Thuringia have been given permission not to check the tickets of foreign passengers after an increase in threatening behavior from asylum seekers towards staff.
The Thüringer Allgemeine reported on Sunday that railway staff had been informed to do all they can to de-escalate troublesome travelers, even if that meant effectively giving them a free pass on their commute.
The German newspaper had been contacted by a married couple who had recently traveled on a Süd-Thüringen-Bahn train and noticed that those they assumed to be foreigners were not having their tickets checked while German commuters were still scrutinized.
Upon contacting the railway service provider, a spokesperson denied the allegation and claimed that tickets had probably been checked before the couple had boarded the train.
However, upon further questioning, the rail company did concede that conductors had discretion to not demand to see valid tickets to ride should they consider the situation is at risk of escalation and they feel threatened or intimidated.
The same railway company recently made headlines when its works council complained in a letter to Thurinigia’s left-wing Minister-President Bodo Ramelow about the behavior of foreigners on public transport.
An excerpt from the letter read:
State and federal politics repeatedly talk about “integration” and tolerance of/towards migrants/refugees. We ask you seriously, how can you expect citizens of this country to be open to the refugee policy being practiced when they have to witness – practically every day, and not just on public transport! – such violence, brutality, and absolute contempt and mockery of our laws and society, including its so-called “values”?”
https://rmx.news/article/germany-train-conductors-urged-not-to-check-tickets-of-foreigners-to-keep-the-peace/
If “Islamophobia” is outlawed according to the stated definition, Islam will be the only religion protected by blasphemy laws in Britain. That will make it de facto the established state religion. Prove me wrong.
No, islamophobia is not a meaningless word.
On the contrary, it has a wide range of possible meanings, applicable to any situation when the government wants to shut down debate, intimidate the population and acquire new powers.
Most of us in the west have reached the consensus that racism is an intolerable evil
The problem with this development is the unspoken motive behind it. Because the idea that “racism is an intolerable evil” is used by the anti-whitists to promote and further their Great Replacement agenda. The idea of the “intolerable evil of racism” is a clear attempt by the anti-white racialists to silence and disarm the race that the anti-whitists are trying to replace!
Racism is as meaningless and meaningful as Islamophobia (see MajorMajor above). I can’t take any article seriously if it uses the word “racism” without defining what it means. As usual, the political right are far too defensive, apologetic and fighting the battle on the enemy’s terms.
Is “racism” morally wrong? Should it be illegal? Not sure and no. Unequal treatment under the law based on race is morally wrong and daft, but that doesn’t happen. Unequal treatment in other encounters based on race just seems a bit daft to me – by all means make assumptions about people before you know them, some of which may be based on race, how big their noses are, whatever, but once you know them, treat them as you find them. But if it turns out that you generally don’t like non-white people, so bloody what, as long as you don’t go around beating them up just because they are non-white – but that’s illegal already.
Exactly— well said! And the people of the West did not reach that consensus naturally, on their own. They were “NUDGED”. Simultaneously, Third World ethnic groups were “nudged” to think that they are victims of racism that only exists among white people.
That is why I cannot agree with the statement that “racism is an intolerable evil”.
Racism is just another word for Tribalism, preferring to live and work in peace among your own people, your own ethnic group, or tribe. It’s perfectly natural, and helped mankind to survive for thousands of years, by bonding tribes together. Even the word “king” comes from “kin”.
Even the ancient Greek philosophers recognized that democracy only works in small, ethnically homogenous societies.
” It’s also why people who fully understand that human beings cannot change sex are nonetheless parroting the slogan: “trans women are women.”
Yes but they are spineless fools. BTW when are you going to invite one of the very few MPs with integrity Andrew Bridgen back on Free Speech Nation.
““beyond the permissible limits of an objective debate”
And it kind of justified the killings of Charlie Hebdo. They were all Je Sues Charlie for like, five minutes!
” These are dizzying possibilities that remind us that the state should never attempt to control the speech or thoughts of its citizens”
Again, that is not their job. Their job is to serve, advise and provide security and laws that ‘we’ agree on through a democratic process. All the time people were risking their lives to jump the Wall at risk of getting shot, or later, mauled by two Alsatians, there was already a march through the institutions.
The government, courts and police already uphold Sharia over British Law, just as they uphold EU Law.
Ask any immigrant or child molester.
Our government also upholds polygamy when practiced by immigrants. Welfare guidance contains the phrase ‘valid polygamous marriage’.
I think it was Andrew Cummins who said that Islamophobia was invented by fascists and used by cowards to manipulate morons. I agree.
Isn’t the person above the letter A in the photo one Ricky Lee …..?
“We don’t criminalise Christianophobia or Marxistophobia or Freemarketcapitalismophobia, so why should we do so when it comes to Islam”?—————-Because there is no violence coming your way for being “capitalistaphobic” or Christianaphobic”——Plus Mass Immigration Dogma and the desire to destroy National Identities to make Global Government easier for the technocrats at the UN/WEF means that our own Political Class would rather expose us to violence and sectarian clutter and silence anyone who isn’t too happy about that and who says so by imprisoning them as dissidents.
A phobia is an irrational fear. Given the violence of various Islamist groups around the world, It would be irrational not to fear
I would say that if the government deems that people are islamaphobics, because they object to the treatment of women, sharia law, the indoctrination of others, and worst of all “making muslims feel second class” that said “government” takes a good look at itself. This is, irrespective of church attendance, a christian country, with beliefs going back centuries, and islam has no place in civilised societys due to its very nature, and barbaric practices, as for “second class”, better not put what I really think!
Islam is not compatible with the values of The Enlightenment; with secular democracy which is underpinned by free speech, or the more modern concept of Equality (for women, gays or non-Muslims, all of whom are discriminated against by Islam).
It isn’t phobic to state that, it’s a fact. It is what Islam teaches.
Now I’m sure that many Muslims living in the UK ignore the elements of Islam which are not compatible with western democracy. But a great many quite obviously don’t and the Establishment appears to want to appease these fundamentalists.
I can only presume that is out of fear. It is, after all, far easier to control a largely irreligious, peaceful, tolerant section of society than a fundamentalist, intolerant group which has regularly demonstrated a tendency towards violence.
What they failed to understand is that appeasement never works: they should have come down hard when the Salman Rushdie fatwa was issued ….. but they didn’t. They now have an Islamist tiger by the tail and they are terrified of it.
Islam is either the One True religion, or it was invented by 7th century tribesmen. People who thought that the world is flat, that drinking camel urine is good for your health and that women should be slaves.
Looking at the muslim world today, there seems to be a clear majority that believes that too much islam is bad for you. The iranian regime isn’t popular, and neither were ISIS. In Egypt they elected the Muslim Brotherhood, but before long there was a popular coup to get rid of them. I remember watching a Youtube video of the demonstrations in support of the army, in which a 12-year old boy explained in arabic with English subtitles why an islamic state is a bad idea.
In Britain, the moronocracy seems to have a higher opinion of islam than most muslims, and islamist activists have more freedom and influence than they do in Egypt or Saudi Arabia. It’s not going to end well.
The phrase phobia has been hijacked and weaponised by the woke left to attack those who reject their absurd “social justice” agenda. A phobia by definition is an irrational fear of something, with little or no objective basis. That hardly applies to the many people accused of Islamophobia, who merely have legitimate worries about certain expressions of Islam, be that Sharia law, Islamist terrorism, accusations of blasphemy, treatment of women and human rights abuses in many Islamic countries. These are rational fears and not a phobia.
I also find it odd that terms such as Hinduphobia, Buddhistphobia or Sikhphobia are absent in the UK. There is an obvious reason for that.
Any cohesive society must have agreed dictionary definitions of words that all understand. No one has the right to distort language for political purposes. We need to start with words like phobia and hate and use them with caution.
‘the European Court of Human Rights agreed with a court in Austria that criticism of the Prophet Mohammed was “beyond the permissible limits of an objective debate”.
A century ago very few people in Europe would have disagreed that a similar prohibition should apply to criticism of Jesus Christ. We haven’t been the secular free liberal society of Mr Doyle’s conception for very long. I recall a blasphemy element in the Oz trial of the early 1970s.
The social chafe of Islam is in its bringing back of things that we believe resolved and confined to the past. Take the burqa. And consider European women’s dress in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Or swimming costumes of those times.
Really so different from Islamic women’s dress today?
Convent girls were forced to bathe while dressed head-to-toe in muslin shrouds. This demented prudery that Islam is bringing back was still alive here in the 1960s, when, as an adolescent, you were forbidden to ask anything about your sexuality, and clergymen appeared last thing every night on TV to warn you of hellfire for expressing any interest.
Take homosexuality. As recently as the 1960s it remained criminalised in England, and was still called gross indecency in legislation. As recently as 1800, convicted homosexuals were hanged and exhibited staked through the heart at crossroads. What liberals we so recently were!
We are a better people than we were then, perhaps not in all respects, but certainly in those.
Take public execution. As late as 1867, our forbears jostled in the dawn rush to get the best view, just as the faithful do today when the mosques turn out in Mecca.
Take cousin marriage. Standard practice in all of Europe down to 1900 or so. We don’t allow it today because we know better, and we don’t want it brought back and insulated from criticism by the confected offence of islamophobia.
There are so many issues with this word and the later phobias. Firstly, a phobia is a fear of something not a hatred. How can you prosecute someone for having a fear? A new group of words is needed if you want to say someone hates something or is being nasty because phobia is not it. There is also a problem with the use of antisemitism, of course, because for some reason this now has come to mean Jewish people and has lost its original meaning of all from the area, including Arabs, Phoenicians etc. Finally, I am happy to accept that the Islamic faith has followers of many races and therefore a hatred of Islam is not racism but religious hatred. With Jews coming from many backgrounds including Semitic, European and African amongst others, I have never understood why it is regarded as a race, therefore open to racism, any more than Islam. For me, the three main Abrahamic faiths are just equal sides of a fairytale triangle.
I’m not Islamophobic. I just really, really dislike the 7th Century version that so many of the religion seem to think has a place in 2124.