Tommy Robinson, LBC and Sadiq Khan are all Islamophobic according to the IHRC. Photo: Adrian Dennis/Getty.
What do Tommy Robinson, LBC Radio, the Conservative Party and Sadiq Khan have in common?
The answer is that they have all been shortlisted for Islamophobe of the Year awards by the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), a British campaign and advocacy group with close links to the Iranian government.
It all sounds like a bit of a joke. The “Commission” used to promote the Awards in a semi-comedic style: as an irreverent swipe at those who have shown hatred to Muslims in public life. But there was always a bad smell about all this: having a laugh, about hatred. The apparently light-hearted format enabled fierce denunciations of others for the same reasons that are getting people killed. In 2015, the IHRC gave another of its Islamophobia Awards to the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo — just two months after jihadis slaughtered 12 people at the magazine’s offices in Paris.
The origins of this unsavouriness are no secret. In his 2023 review of the Prevent anti-extremism programme, William Shawcross described the organisation as “an Islamist group ideologically aligned with the Iranian regime”, with a history of “extremist links and terrorist sympathies”. Until recently, the IHRC’s director was Saied Reza Ameli, also secretary of Iran’s Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution.
Nevertheless, thanks to its campaigning on Islamophobia, the IHRC has had a notable influence on British public life. And Islamophobia is now a pressing concern of the British state and Labour government.
How can we best understand this concept of Islamophobia? One of its problems is how it seems to mean whatever the likes of the IHRC dislike at any given moment. The literal meaning, though, is implicit in the word: Islam-phobia. It suggests an irrational fear of Islam, prompting questions of whether fear of Islam is itself irrational (a view that would match Islamic doctrine) or whether versions of that fear can be rational.
From the Islamist scene in Britain, a group called Muslim Engagement and Development (MEND) has placed itself at the forefront of efforts to identify and combat Islamophobia. It provided significant support for a landmark report in 2018 by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on British Muslims, co-chaired by current Health Secretary West Streeting MP.
MEND stated that Islamophobia was:
“…a prejudice, aversion, hostility, or hatred towards Muslims and encompasses any distinction, exclusion, restriction, discrimination, or preference against Muslims that has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.”
This, you might say, is a maximalist position. In a cutting response to the APPG report for Policy Exchange in 2019, Trevor Phillips, John Jenkins and Martyn Frampton noted that “the comprehensiveness of the behaviour that MEND seeks to place beyond the pale is striking”. A whole smorgasbord of other potential definitions can be found in the APPG publication. Some of these definitions came from academics. One came from the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC), a grouping of Muslim governments from around the world. The OIC described Islamophobia in 2007 as “the worst form of terrorism”. In a follow-up report, it said:
“Islamophobia signifies the contemporary proliferation of discrimination against Muslims and distortion of Islam and is partly due to the ignorance and lack of understanding of Islam in the West. It would be an unfortunate error of judgment in believing that Islam is linked to terror; that it is intolerant of other religious beliefs, that its values and practices are not democratic; that it favours repression of freedom of expression and undermining human rights.”
The APPG report makes similarly bold claims, the core one being that “Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.” The behaviours it deemed Islamophobic include those which are already illegal, such as threats of violence, and discrimination at work. But the report also claims that Islamophobia encompasses Muslim students failing to win places at top-level universities, and the schools inspectorate Ofsted questioning whether young girls should be wearing the hijab. And if you think these definitions are overly expansive, then you might already be an Islamophobe. Another example of Islamophobia, the report says, is “accusing Muslims… of exaggerating Islamophobia.”
Islamophobia is a total wrong, it appears: blasphemous but also irrational and immoral; rooted in Western racism and ignorance. And from it arises the error of thinking there is any link between Islam and young Muslim men yelling “Allahu-Akbar” (“God is Great”) as they plunge knives into passers-by on European streets. As the OIC points out, this would be unfortunate. Not wrong, inaccurate or unfactual, but unfortunate and an error of judgement.
These claims are worth unpacking, not least for how they demonstrate the characteristic Islamist fusing of a so-called “mediaeval” religion with the techniques and styles of Western secular modernity, particularly progressive social science.
From the Islamic perspective, Islam cannot be associated with bad things because it represents submission to a perfect God. All problems associated with Islam and Muslims therefore must originate outside Islam. For the more ideological sociologists and historians meanwhile, bad things in society necessarily have their root cause in Western culture, capitalism, Whiteness, colonialism, Englishness and the rest.
These two perspectives come together in what we might call Islamist sociology, which treats Islam as a force of progress in the world. Progressive ideology is particularly amenable to Islamists, for it conveys the idea that believers are on the right side of history. History is on their side. The world is moving in their direction. If you do not accept their version of truth, you will eventually lose.
The West’s ignorance of this perspective matches the Islamic notion of “jahiliyya”, which describes the age of ignorance before the Prophet Mohammed received the word of God. Applied to Western countries, it supposes that we are in a pre-Islamic state of ignorance. Mainstream Left-wing history and social science see things in a similar way. In this view, Muslims and other immigrants serve as a motor of change, bringing us to a higher historical state.
In this way, the notion of Islamophobia helps to bring together Islamic and Western intellectual traditions. It converts Islamic law — or merely the desire of Islamists to punish those who displease them — into secular rationalist and moral language, helping to mobilise both Muslims and non-Muslims in support. In effect, it works as a form of linguistic laundering: converting religious authority into a general, all-consuming rationality and morality. This makes it an effective tool. Critics of Islamophobia often speak of how it gets “weaponised”. This assessment is accurate, for the concept is consistently used as a prop to punish, but also to deter and bring others onboard via the appearance of strength. At the very least it is a form of social technology, working to advance the group’s aims, to build the size and strength of the group, and to weaken its opponents.
In this regard, the lack of an agreed definition can be a strength. The nebulousness of “Islamophobia” grants maximum flexibility to those who deploy this weapon. It is a weapon that can be used freely to denounce anyone who displeases Islamists and their allies. It can be invoked against the authorities, to intimidate and win concessions. And it can be used against fellow Muslims, as a more ecumenical version of takfir. (Takfir is excommunication from Islam, or society, potentially meriting death).
If we are not to be Islamophobic, it seems we must defer to Islamists, to their interests and their interpretation of their religion as perfect. We must bow to Islamists’ authority to decide the boundary between right and wrong in relation to Islam. This fits into the Islamic distinction between the “dar-al-harb” (the House of War) and the “dar-al-Islam” (the House of Islam): assigning all bad things in the world outside Islam, to a state of war. Through this framing, Islamists can bypass inconvenient issues like the “grooming’”(or “rape”) gangs and Islamic terrorist attacks. The culprits are not the individuals involved, but external forces: lax morals in Western society, colonialism, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Israel-Palestine and discrimination against Muslims in the West.
This distinction between the House of War and the House of Islam helps explain another of the Islamists’ tendencies: that of inveigling themselves with the authorities one minute and denouncing them in the strongest terms the next. There is a tension here. Islamists see the West as a place which, while not of Islam at the moment, at least has or might have arrangements with its representatives. At the same time, the House of War is implacably hostile to Muslims and must be fought against. The APPG report points towards the latter in describing Britain as an “Islamophobic environment”: it is another way of describing a House of War.
In this framing, like the closely related idea of systemic racism, everything is touched by Islamophobia and so everything will have to be changed to defeat it. From the track record of advocates, their maximalist approach and their intolerance of differing views, they will likely never be satisfied.
Nevertheless, the British state is trying to satisfy them. Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister, recently set up a group “to deliver a definition of Anti-Muslim Hatred/Islamophobia within six months”. Explaining the creation of this group, the government said that “incidents of anti-Muslim hatred reach[ed] the highest number on record in 2024.” The group’s chair, the former Conservative minister Dominic Grieve KC, said the group’s task was to balance the pressing need to impose a definition on behalf of British Muslims “with the unwavering requirement to maintain freedom of thought and expression under law for all.”
Eventually the Government will have to decide: between censorship and freedom. If a definition is indeed agreed and, as activists demand, operationalised, the effects will be significant. Media reporting will become even more fraught with risk, leading to a more aggressive culture of self-censorship. Academic work likewise: further undermining the culture of truth-seeking in universities. To resist the demands of Muslim activists in the workplace will become perilous for both bosses and employees, clearing the way for Islamic practices to be embedded in daily routines while others are blocked for being discriminatory. At Michaela School, for example, the activists have been temporarily set back, but will eventually win.
It seems that Western traditions of free speech and inquiry, already straining under repeated attacks, will no longer apply in relation to Islam and Muslims in British public and institutional life. And so gradually, seemingly inexorably, Britain will continue its weary progress into becoming an Islamic state in all but name. Islamophobia is a crucial tool in the battle to make that happen: a startlingly effective social weapon.
Ben Cobley is author of The Tribe: the Liberal-Left and the System of Diversity and The Progress Trap (forthcoming). He is a journalist by trade and a former Labour Party activist.
bencobley 
The author appears to be saying that the tide of Islam is inevitable. Nonsense! It was said that the tide of progressivism was inevitable in the United States, but now we’re witnessing something far more invigorating. The gut instinct of the US populace kicked in.
It’s far from being too late for something similar to happen in Europe. Any attempt to force Islamism down our throats – in effect, to upend the separation between church and state – would certainly be a test of how far our populations have come, especially since the manipulations of the Covid era have become clear.
The entire concept of the perfect god is pernicious and manipulative. The populations of the medieval period eventually overturned the Catholic church from its central position of authority; any attempt to reinstate such authoritarianism will not be tolerated.
I don’t think he’s saying that, LL. Rather, that it’s likely IF the left progressive loonies continue on their chosen path towards a socialist utopia. I think he explains quite clearly the way in which lefties play the role of useful idiots.
God I hope you’re right
If people, and more specifically their governments, in Western Europe don’t wise up, then ironically the notion of the Islamists regarding ‘jahiliyya’ may well be proven to have been correct.
Given current birth rates and trends in immigration, we could indeed be living in a pre-Islamist state of ignorance, or at least naivete.
Islamoprudence is a vote for your own safety. Blasphemy laws won’t end well. I am yet again reminded of Professor Betz: “it’s odd. Labour is doing everything it can to promote civil war”.
Civil insurrection looms.
A brave and brilliant author, cheers Ben.
Testing
You are.
Bogus accusations of Islamophobia and antisemitism are equally stifling free speech.
Bravo. Excellent article. Thank goodness that, in Rayner and Grieve, we have respectively Britain’s leading public intellectual and its most strident defender of democracy and objectivity to decide for us how Islamophobic we already are and how best we should be silenced.
Supported by that heroic defender of poor innocent terrorists Lord H.
“Terrorism” is what?
No state violent actions?
So, what are drone attacks guided by AI? Do they bring terror to civilian communities. You think you are saying something, but once again JT, you just repeat nauseating slogans. Try and look at behaviour without using nouns that obfuscate.
“And so gradually, seemingly inexorably, Britain will continue its weary progress into becoming an Islamic state in all but name. Islamophobia is a crucial tool to make that happen….”
Why are the politicians playing this game with us? Consider an alternative:
And so gradually, seemingly inexorably, Germany will continue its weary progress into becoming a Jewish state in all but name.
In Germany, this is what politicians are afraid of … and it’s rubbed off onto the rest of the western world.
“Once upon a time, the Islamic world was a superpower and its jihad an irresistible force to be reckoned with. Over two centuries ago, however, a rising Europe—which had experienced more than one millennium of Muslim conquests and atrocities—eclipsed and defanged Islam. As Muhammad’s civilization retreated into obscurity, the post-Christian West slowly came into being. Islam did not change, but the West did: Muslims still venerate their heritage and religion—which commands jihad against infidels—whereas the West has learned to despise its heritage and religion, causing it to become an unwitting ally of the jihad.”
Ibrahim, Raymond. Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West (p. 296). Grand Central Publishing.
There is only one force of united terrorism that threatens the entire world, and that force has entered and is taking over nu britn without having to fire a single round.
‘…the notion of Islamophobia helps to bring together Islamic and Western intellectual traditions. It converts Islamic law… into secular rationalist and moral language…converting religious authority into a general, all-consuming rationality and morality.’
How can there be this admixture? Combining in one glass pure water with tinctures of other substances. If what is outside the glass is imperfect, putting it into the glass sullies the pureness of the water. Unlike oil and water, neither can be separated.
In Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, whence is the source of corruption? Is it inside the person who wears the ring? Or is it in the ring itself, even when not worn by a person?
To believe that the allure to commit wrong actions comes from outside oneself is to project temptation onto others. It is ‘your women’ who are ‘out of control’. A shield against self-examination of any sort other than what produces a highly expurgated view of oneself.
The sanctioning of whatever enterprise is conducted – giving a coin to a beggar or raping a lone woman – has already been acquired for the one who believes that within themselves lies perfectness of motive and is merely confirmed when it is carried to a successful conclusion.
The Western liberal ideology of improvement originated from within Western society, not from a deity that is a strict monism. How can what originates from a perfect God have an accord, share a ground of cooperation, with what is from the imperfect elsewhere? How can Western liberal intellectual traditions, being part of the imperfect elsewhere, have the same motive of improvement as one coming from a perfect deity, if the former are in ignorance of the will of the deity?
‘…converting religious authority into a general, all-consuming rationality and morality.’ If what is religious is converted into what is secular, how is it still of God? If what is secular is converted into what is of God, how is it still secular?
For the Christian, not the Western liberal, the submission to God is also a reception. A reception into the heart by faith of the Holy Spirit. The body is the temple of the Spirit. As such, the body must be treated as holy.
Every person’s body is made to be that. At the same time, the indwelling of the Spirit does not automatically make the body perfect. The Spirit is contrary to the flesh to constrain the motives of the latter but also leads to truth, so that, just as kindness can be wiser than truth, so truth is something that charity rejoices at and, in concert, charity becomes the ontological reality.
A perceptive article that clears away much misunderstanding.
I think Islam will have its tendons cut by the historicity issues long before it is ready to jump into the air and become Britain’s #1 faith.
Not hateful questions but rather ones like these (from an academic paper I’m reading this morning.)
Who exactly is this prophet ? Name given ‘MHMT’ is a title only. Seems to have referred to Christ initially, ‘the desired one’ – name appears on coins with a cross. Then starts to mean ‘the praised one’, crosses disappear, replaced by symbols of stones, but it’s still Christ in some way then it’s another bloke? Let’s call him ‘Mo’.
Why does it pick up a long discredited heresy to dismiss Jesus’ death, when all serious historians agree – if they agree on nothing else – that a preacher we know as Jesus existed & was killed by the Romans?
Why are events in this book based in towns which in all likelihood barely existed at the time they’re supposed to have happened?
Given all that, what’s the basis on which we ought to forswear wine and beer, and our beloved pork, and take up a very different life, all based on the utterances of this hazy entity, who early on, is identified with a bloodthirsty warlord, and who only slips into the role of creator of a new faith via a confused process where a man ‘Jesus’ gets separated from his ‘Christological predicate’, in an older faith?
Don’t you have to be better than the thing you’re replacing? If you’re just smashed up bits of the old thing, scrambled, reassembled badly in a botched job, inflicted via coercion & war, is that likely to take off?
I continually post that we are and always have been at war with Islam and that this force will always seek to take over opposite societies.
Ergo, I fully expect to be taken aside by British border police should I visit the UK as an expatriated national. If not next time then it will just be a matter of time.
““incidents of anti-Muslim hatred reach[ed] the highest number on record in 2024.”
Direct result of people shouting Allah Akbar as they kill people perhaps ?
The idea that the solution to people objecting to being murdered is to define objecting as a crime could only happen under this government.
Rise of anti- semitism due to Israel killing innocent women and children perhaps?
All this talk of free speech yet I haven’t read one complaint here about the shut down of free speech when it comes to criticism of Israel. Everybody cool with that infringement of free speech?
Maybe if they called it Israelaphobia we would get more push back.
Perhaps that’s because there hasn’t been a ‘shut down of free speech when it comes to criticism of Israel’. On the contrary, we’ve had the usual suspects screeching demands for another holocaust whilst attacking the police and bystanders virtually every Saturday afternoon for more than a year. Haven’t you noticed?
But there has Hugh. Depending on what country you live in. Look at Germany, you can’t protest it, write about it, nothing. Just the other day, an student at Colombia university in NY wrote a pro – divestment article about Israel. She gets accused of “discriminatory harassment” whatever that might be. Has the right to “speak her truth” through words or not. The western media is largely not critical of Israel at all. I agree with the author, islamaphobia might be thing, but it can’t be put into law. One should be able to criticise, religion, culture, sovereign states, the whole thing. And free speech loving done, and his goons, ran on free speech, mocking the over sensitive left. What does he do? Threatens to defund universities that allow “illegal protests.”
What’s an illegal protest in the so called liberal west? The protests against Israel has nothing to do Jewishness or the lazy and by now laughable “anti semetism” slurs.
It is against a sovereign state carrying out ethnic cleansing in Gaza, and now the West Bank. 40000 people have been removed from their homes on the west back. What do you read about this in western media? Are you allowed to protest that without being called a Jew hater? Unbelievable.
Not sure I entirely follow your point. Is criticism of Israel’s response to being attacked by Hamas being shut down ? I know the pro palestinian protesters try to do that . But they too are very wrong. Hamas have been attacking Israel daily for years . The folk in Gaza choose to be lead by Hamas and are very vocal in their support of Hamas and its brainwashing in schools. So it’s unsurprising that a wholesale attack has produced a violent response.
My own view is that Israel’s response has not been particularly successful and it has killed a lot of non combatants . I also think the pro Palestinian protesters are quite wrong .
It’s a big subject. And most of those talking about haven’t been there -indeed many of them couldn’t find it on a map.
Where is the criticism of Israel being shut down? I hear it every single day so i think you’re dreaming.
Look at the German laws. You can’t express your thoughts on what kind is state Israel is. What other country are we not allowed to comment on?
In what other place on earth would the bulldozing of houses, burning of mosques, stealing land, and pushing 40000 people out of their homes not be headline news every day? This is what Israel are doing in the Hamas free West Bank. The western media is largely silent. What if it was the other way around? Yes I know.. anti Semite.
If you have a problem with the term Islamaphobia for critical views on certain aspects of a certain religion or culture, then you should feel the same way by the way anti semitism is being flung around.
a) what have German laws got to do with a discussion on UK Labour islamophobia legislation. b) Maybe Germany has strict antisemitism laws due to some particular event in its history. I mean nothing springs to mind but it’s a possibility…
My experience with German airport police convinced me that it was still 1936 not 2025: one just has to ” scratch the surface” in that odious, tedious, ghastly country
Thanks for demonstrating the source of the rise of anti-Semitism.
You just made my point.
Islamaphobe Nathan.
Childish.
If Muslim influence were to disappear from the West tomorrow, there would not be one thing that would not be improved.
Seems incontrovertible, and yet all but one of our governments seem to be in thrall to this idea that all virtue is in direct reverse-proportion to melatonin. And since our education in history extends no further back than 2000AD, our picture of an individual Muslim is sufficiently swarthy to qualify as ‘virtuous’, as opposed to the pale architects of our own society.
“Islamophobia” is a nonsensical, overly-emotive term for essentially reasonable antipathy towards the encroachment of islamic overentitlement and intrusion into UK daily life. A phobia is a misplaced fear to the point of avoidance which alters capability to live one’s life normally.
A better spelling would be IslamoFAUXbia.
Love your alternative spelling!
Fear of Islamic supremacism is entirely rational. Islam means “submission”. A muslim is one who has submitted. And the related word, “salam” carries the clear connotation that “peace” is achieved through submission.
Why should I not fear an ideology that promises me peace only if I submit?
“Islamophobia” usually refers to legitimate criticism of a pernicious and intrinsically violent set of anti-western beliefs and practices.
160 million views now of Silenced. And I am not allowed to say anymore. Rag.
When Stalin fights Hitler, who is the good guy?
Yes, the powers that be have pushed upon us “Islamophobia”. They have also foisted upon us “anti-Semitism”. Those powers that favor support of Israel apply anti-semitism with a very broad brush. Likewise, those that view Israel unfavorably use Islamophobia as their crudgel.
75 years ago, in the wake of the holocaust, the State of Israel was created in war, and over a half a million Moslem and Christian people where ethnically cleansed from that state. Since then, the war has not ceased. Both sides have resorted to their own means of terrorism in the fighting of that war. The West has generally supported Israel. Many influential Zionists have help paint the picture of the Islamic terrorist in the collective consciousness of the West. It is very difficult for many to not see a devout Moslem as a violent Islamacist. Especially since Zionists try and paint that picture.
We do not need Zionists to try to paint the picture of a violent Islamic terrorist. We see it every time a car or van is driven into a crowd or a bomb is exploded on a bus/tube/in a theatre, or a maniac runs amok with a knife. We do not need to faff about with your idea of collective consciousness, we just need to listen to and watch the news for real events.
Fair enough, but look at the history of Zionist terrorism. When they were fighting to establish Israel they assasinated Lord Moyne, they assasinated Count Bernadotte, they bombed the King David Hotel, they killed every man woman and child they could find in Deir Yassin. These are just the well documented atrocities. There are countless others not so well documented.
Ancient History? Well, what have the Zionists been doing since 10/7. Massive murders of civilians, justified by military necessity. Assasinations of leaders of groups that they have signed cease fires with. Bombing embassies.
Take your fingers out of your ears and realize that in the Middle Eastern conflict, terrorism is a way of life for all parties.
Lots of down votes but nobody with the gonads to debate me.
Are you suggesting that until such time as we unequivocally condemn the behavior of Israel vis a vis the Palestinians, we should not be allowed to object to knife-wielding maniacs on European streets? Asking for a friend.
There is a strong correlation between truth and downticks on Unherd.. they are, in fact, directly proportional – bigots hate truths and facts because they interefere with their vitriol and challenge their ignorance.. so take heart from that!
Somehow I think the result of this work would be different if the Muslims voted Tory.
Always remember: the rise of Islamism in Britain wasn’t an accident of organic migration. Our ruling class has deliberately sabotaged society.
Exactly, and it goes all the way back to Churchill, who was quite enamored with the ‘Moslems’. So be careful what you wish for in a strong leader, as often he wants strong (i.e. forceful) but submissive peoples over independent (think tolerant) but disobedient ones.
“Eventually the Government will have to decide between censorship and freedom.”
It’s already made its views perfectly clear on that issue.
The law makes you afraid to have an opinion. The UK media limits what you can say. The result is a herd of English sheep. And all that is left them to say is ‘good article Unherd’.
It is a pathetic sight.
Free Tommy Robinson.
In tandem with Islamism is that Muslims are incapable of racism…as are Blacks and any so called p o c. Muslims are incapable of antisemitism. Even when nurses video themselves bragging they will kill Israeli patients. Then it’s “selective outrage” according to Islamic organizations. IN America, I’m not aware of a single Islamic organization that condemns the murder of Jewish Israelis. Jewish students, any politicians who denounce the ongoing Palestinianist jihadi takeover of universities are of course “ISLAMOPHOBES” and worst of all Zionists I see that in Britain as at the Oscars, Zionists are held in contempt and Palestine represents the highest ideals to which humankind can aspire.
The only part of your vitriol that makes sense is your final sentence, taken literally! It is quite true, in comparison to Israeli Jews, Palestinian Muslims are amazing, wonderful people; but the Istaeli Jews (97% by their own admission) are heinous, degenerate, lowlife, evil monsters.
I find the whole thing weird. Is it now Labour party policy to support movements whose views suppress women and oppose homosexuals ?
You sir have been drinking kool-aid. This may be true of counties like Saudi Arabia that follow a strict Sharia Law, it does not hold true for many countries. Even Iran is not as strict as SA. It did not hold true for Syria under Assad, I don’t know if it held true for Gaza before 10/7. Many Moslems in western countries want no part of that kind of law, and would organize to fight it, if zelots tried to make it happen.
Some time, watch Al Jazzera. There are lots of women doing journalism on it, and other than the higher proffessional standards, looks exactly like western media.
You are 100% correct but, as you see, most Unherd folk don’t wants facts confusing their bigotry! ’twas ever thus!
I’ve worked in Islamic countries.. I never experienced any difficulties of any kind even vaguely related to my Christianity.. including entering mosques btw!
I also never had any difficulties travelling in Muslim countries. But I know a woman who worked as a nurse in Abu Dhabi, who was told to buy a riding-crop so that she could swat away the groping hands of male passers-by. One could hope that such attitudes towards women would eventually fade away in western Muslims, but I, for one, don’t think it fair to expect women to have to wait for the day when Muslim men sort themselves out, and in the meantime have to walk in fear on the streets of their own cities.
Of even greater concern to me is the apparent inability of Islam’s apologists in the West to accept that Islam was from its inception equal parts religion and political project. Practically speaking, this means that in order to live a fully Muslim life, you have to live in a Muslim country under Islamic law. But don’t take my word for it; read Bernard Lewis, or here’s John S. Badeau in The Genius of Arab Civilization: “It is significant that, as Islam elaborated, it was Canon Law (Shari’ah) rather than theology that was most rigorously protected and applied. Men had to live within a Muslim society to be fully Muslim, not simply to profess Islamic beliefs in any society in which they might find themselves.” The implications of this, if true, are not pleasant to contemplate, but given present demographic trends, we may be confronted with them soon. It may be that, as the previous commenter wrote, resistance may build from within the Muslim community to any attempt to impose Shari’ah. That would be terrific, but if I were living in Europe I would not be pinning my hopes on an agreeable outcome. By all means, have Muslims settle these issues among themselves, but have them do it in the “house of Islam” which, for now at least, doesn’t include Europe.
Right. Two very good points that need to be central in our anti-Sharia efforts. Out of respect for the memory of my mother and my aunts, etc., I refuse to accept the veiling of women. And for the sake of my many gay friends I will not tolerate a renewal of anti-gay prejudices.
Honestly, I have no respect for men who can’t deal with women (gyno-phobia!). Or with homosexuals. It’s childish, deeply un-manly and, truly medieval. The Islamic world needs to grow up and find some balls. We need to start saying this loud and clear. To make our distaste and lack of respect known.
There are as many takes on Islam as there are on Christianity.. from fundamentalist to liberal.. you, lumping them all together, are simple demonstrating your ignorance, at best; bigotry at worst.
And now the media will bring down Rupert Lowe.
They are your problem. But you can only say that via the media.
UK is finished if they break Reform.
I try to imagine a hypothetical Islamic country accepting thousands of non-Muslims seeking refuge from economic deprivation or civil strife, forming localised communities, building places of worship and getting representation in the political system. But, somehow, I can’t see that happening.
You’re obviously not very well travelled then! There are large Jewish communities (+Christian) in many Islamic countries..
The Jewish and Christian communities in Islamic countries are not immigrants: they are remnants of pre-Islamic populations subjugated by Muslim invaders. They are largely deprived of political representation and prevented from building places of worship.
My feeling after recently viewing the movie Lady of Heaven is that the concept of Islamophobia is a creature of Sunni Islam with its historically derived warring tendencies and depictions as unbelievers as evil because they resist the hard hierarchies of Sunni jurisprudence.
However what is striking about the zeal in which Islamists and Progressives wish to reformulate society according to their own image is the degree to which they have deviated from “al-wasatiyyah” which is a central concept for both Sunni and Shia jurisprudence.
https://www.islamicity.org/5465/al-wasatiyyah-moderation-as-an-agenda-of-the-ummah/
The idea behind the concept is to perfect oneself in the eyes of the Perfect God as was being demonstrated by Muhammad in the film Lady of Heaven. That is to say the point of “al-wasatiyyah” is NOT to perfect other people but oneself.
Of course, increasingly within our British State and increasingly within our British nation, the opposite is true whereby Islam is being promoted as means to perfect others with aggressive activists demanding the reformation of individuals, organisations and the government in accordance with their own very imperfect infallible egos.
Thus the House of Islam which is meant to promote as a central principle “al-wasatiyyah” in order to perfect oneself in the eyes of a Perfect God is rapidly turning into a House of War that seeks to subjugate others to the ego of Islamic and Progressive fundamentalists.
This discordance provides a pathway through the weapon of Islamophobia by simply arguing that any expressions of Islam that don’t align with “al-wasatiyyah” isn’t actually an expression of Islam at all but an ego-driven version that goes by the same name. Once a particular expression is shown not to be Islam then one can’t be accused of Islamophobia without explaining how a particular expression conforms to “al-wasatiyyah” and the perfection of oneself.
For example threatening to behead school teachers is not Islam since it is clearly not moderate and does not seek to perfect oneself. Similarly, how does the definition of Islamophobia convey moderation and self perfection if it seeks to encapsulate all forms of criticism and rational objections. That clearly isn’t moderate or self perfection but extremism since if a faith and the journey towards self perfection cannot withstand criticism and rational objections then it is not faith or self perfection at all but blind subservience to the ego of Islamic and Progressive fundamentalists.
In other words, if expressions of Islam aren’t predicated on the perfection of oneself in the attempt to emulate the Perfect God then it isn’t Islam and those faux Islamic expressions should be rightly criticised.
So instead of being fearful of Islam, let’s be the national gatekeepers of Islam and so if expressions or definitions don’t conform to the quest towards self perfection then let’s call them out for the heresies that they are.
There’s a sense of surprise in this article and when people comment about this how the establishment seems unable to see the “true nature” of the Islamists.
This entails a significant amount of myopia about the long history of mutually beneficial relations between the rulers of Anglosphere and Islamists. Perhaps it starts as early as the colonisation of India where Muslims are seen as the trustworthy minorities against the majority Hindus.
Going forward, following Churchill’s decision to move to using oil in the British navy, British Empire fights the Ottomans to acquire Arabic oil fields making great use of reviving ancient (as well as fabricated) Islamism when bringing back the Saudi dynasty in puritanical form that had never been seen before. This is of course all captured in the iconic movie Lawrence of Arabia (which includes a lot of romanticisation of what was actually happening needless to say).
Even Iran’s democratically elected (and much more mildly Islamic) regime is sabotaged by the establishment enabling the take over of the Islamic Republic – in a major strategic error that foreshadowed similar errors which happened in Iraq decades later.
Go forward a little more, and Zbigniew Brezinski (Kissinger’s lesser known counterpart) comes up with the plan to revive the, then dormant, Islamism across Asian countries such as Afghanistan to counter the Communist influence – which amongst other things seeds the creation of organisations like Al Qaeda.
So you see there’s more than a century of long fruitful collaboration between the British and American establishments and zealous Islamism, therefore no need to be very surprised at their reactions here.
“…they have all been shortlisted for Islamophobe of the Year awards by the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), a British campaign and advocacy group …”
Perhaps it is time to enact legislation to deal with Anglophobia and to create an English Human Rights Commission?
This article illuminates the profoundly unpleasant nature of the expanding Islamic core at the heart of Western civilisation. It is deeply worrying and sinister in its implications for our future.
“If we are not to be Islamophobic, it seems we must defer to Islamists, to their interests and their interpretation of their religion as perfect. We must bow to Islamists’ authority to decide the boundary between right and wrong in relation to Islam.”
Quod erat demonstrandum!
I suggest you rewrite your piece and use Jewish instead if Islamic and see how similar it looks… What we know so far is that Islamic values have had zero effect on British govt. policy but Jewish (Zionist) values have made jenoc¡de acceptable as British foreign policy. Don’t you see how idiotic you case looks now?
Hmmm … that you resort to personal attack proves that you are not worth listening to. Bye bye!
“Britain will continue its weary progress into becoming an Islamic state in all but name.”
>> we’re already there. If anyone had burnt any other copy of book in Manchester a few weeks ago, nothing would have happened; but burning a copy of the Quran was a crime.
Invaluable analysis, Ben. Thank you.
I cannot understand why Islam is accepted in the West. It opposes our culture, our history, our lifestyle. It is a primitive religion without respect for people who choose other ways of living. The left should hate it, but they support it. Why? I would like to see the end of Islam in the West. It has no place here. If that makes me Islamophobic them so be it.
All of this presupposes that god or allah or anyone else actually exists and that religion is not just a means of controlling people and making a huge amount of money for the people at the top!!