Accusations of ‘Islamophobia’ are being used as a way to suppress the exposure of grooming gangs, a report has found, as worries grow about Labour introducing an Islamic blasphemy law by the back door. The Times has the story.
The Government is being urged to adopt a formal definition of anti-Muslim discrimination to be used nationally, which critics have said would effectively act as a blasphemy law.
On Tuesday, a report by the Policy Exchange think tank warned that the term had been “directly used to attack those who sought to expose the Rotherham grooming scandal”.
Andrew Norfolk, the Times investigative reporter who broke the story [in 2011], was accused of working to “amplify an increasingly prevalent Islamophobia” in a 72-page report by Left-wing academics from the Media Reform Coalition.
Sarah Champion, the Yorkshire MP who fought for victims of the scandal, and Dame Louise Casey, who led an inspection of children’s services at Rotherham council, were shortlisted for the “Islamophobe of the Year” award by a prominent UK Muslim group, the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC).
“As in Rotherham, the charge of Islamophobia is often used by wrongdoers who are Muslim, or their allies, to smear or deter those who seek to expose them,” Andrew Gilligan and Paul Stott, the authors of the Policy Exchange report, said. “Any official definition would make this problem worse. The purpose of an official Islamophobia definition is not to stop anti-Muslim hatred or discrimination —which are already illegal — but to create special protections for one faith.
“The Government rejects claims of two-tier policing, but adopting any form of Islamophobia definition would clearly create a two-tier policy, formalising different treatment of people depending on their religion.”
The Labour Party has adopted the definition of Islamophobia produced by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for British Muslims (APPG), which was criticised for putting ‘grooming gangs’ in inverted commas and suggested that using the term in relation to Muslims was racist.
The single-line definition it recommends is that “Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness”.
It said the term Islamophobia was a modern iteration of “age-old stereotypes and tropes about Islam”, listing these as “sexual profligacy and paedophilia, or Islam and violence” and concluding they “heighten vulnerability of Muslims to hate crimes”.
Worth reading in full.
Apart from anything else, it’s obviously a stupid definition. For one, it can’t decide if Islamophobia is “rooted in racism” or a “type of racism”. Which is it? Make up your mind! The equivocation is presumably because the authors know – and this is a bigger problem with it – that Islam is not, of course, a race. It’s a religion followed by people from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. The definition then missteps again by equating this “racism” with “targeting expressions of Muslimness” – effectively making it “racist” to criticise Islamic beliefs and practices.
A party that confuses religion and race is hardly a fit one to lead a country. It does, though, suggest a promising new definition of the Labour party: “The Labour party is rooted in incompetence and is a type of incompetence that targets farmers, working class people and perceived expressions of independent thinking.”
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