Labour Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner is reportedly planning to establish a 16-person council, with the intention of devising an official Government definition of Islamophobia. Such an initiative, however, is fraught with risks.
The provisions of the current Islamophobia definition don’t just place severe restrictions on freedom of expression to the point of providing cover for the regimes of Muslim-majority countries; they also threaten to undermine scholarly investigations into critical matters of identity and cohesion in modern Britain.
Much of this stems back to 2018, when the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims produced a working definition of Islamophobia. The 2018 report — which is likely to inspire the work of the new council — asserted that accusing Muslims or Muslim-majority states of inventing or exaggerating Islamophobia was itself a contemporary form of Islamophobia. It also advanced the view that accusing Muslim citizens of being more loyal to the Ummah — or transnational Muslim community — was Islamophobic, even though research showed that Muslims in Britain were more likely to attach strong importance to their religious affiliation than their national identity. Meanwhile, a separate 2020 survey by ComRes found that more than two in five British Muslims believed their co-religionist compatriots tended to be more loyal to Saudi Arabia, which includes the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, than to the UK.
The APPG definition of Islamophobia is beset with problems, which is hardly a surprise when one considers the organisations and people involved in its oral evidence sessions and “community consultation” process. First, the recommended chair of the new council is former Tory attorney general and liberal conservative Dominic Grieve, who provided the introduction to the 2018 report. Can he really be trusted to develop a new and improved definition from six years ago? The same can be said of the group’s overreliance on the Runnymede Trust, the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), Muslim Engagement and Development (MEND), and the National Union of Students (NUS). Dr Chris Allen, a “hate expert” who stepped down from leading an academic-led review into the 2022 Leicester disorder following accusations of partiality, also fed into the work of the APPG on British Muslims.
Additionally, the APPG on British Muslims has been part of efforts to de-emphasise the Muslim background of those responsible for acts of terrorism and group-localised child sexual exploitation (GLCSE) — otherwise known as street-based grooming. Though it is important to combat sweeping generalisations, definitions of Islamophobia should not fuel institutional paralysis by detracting from the fact that Islamist extremism remains Britain’s principal terror threat and men of Pakistani Muslim heritage are disproportionately represented among GLCSE prosecutions.
Conflating anti-Muslim discrimination and criticism of organised religion risks the introduction of de facto blasphemy laws disguised as “pro-cohesion activity”. Last November, during “Islamophobia Awareness Month”, Labour MP Tahir Ali asked Keir Starmer if he would “commit to introducing measures to prohibit the desecration of all religious texts and the prophets of the Abrahamic religions”. Responding, the Prime Minister did not rule it out.
The matter has now been thrust back into the spotlight, with Greater Manchester Police recently arresting and naming a man for burning a copy of the Quran in Manchester city centre. This “state-enforced tolerance” will backfire in terms of cohesion, only serving to further antagonise those who believe there is creeping Sharia-inspired regulation of the public realm.
There is, however, scope for a definition of “anti-Muslim prejudice” developed through the lenses of opportunity and security. It should focus on tackling the “Muslim penalty” in spheres of British life such as the labour market and the private rented sector, where practical material improvements can be achieved in the name of fairness and integration. The dissemination of unfounded anti-Muslim conspiracy theories — especially those which risk endangering human life — should be treated with the utmost seriousness.
This is certainly a lesson to be learned from the rioting which unfolded following last summer’s Southport murders. But if primarily drawn from Britain’s grievance-industrial complex, the new council planned by the Labour government risks establishing an anti-freedom charter which provides a specific religio-political milieu with special protections.
A definition of Islamophobia adopted by Labour could be yet another example of “multicultural governance” empowering vocal identitarian activists. The danger is that this comes at the expense of collective public security.
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If you criticise Christianity, hate it, burn its books. Nothing.
If you criticise Islam, hate it, burn its books. Prison.
That makes UK an Islamist country.
Labour protecting its clients for self-interested reasons as usual.
Its very worrying. Any criticism of Islam or Muslims will be verboten, and the Religion of Peace will have more protection than the Church of England. No religion should be beyond mockery.
If implemented, these laws will allow racist Muslim grooming gangs to operate with impunity, as criticism—or even acknowledging their existence—could become a criminal offence.
In other words, these laws are not truly about combating “Islamophobia.” Instead, they appear to be a means of protecting perpetrators of racist child sexual exploitation while criminalising the native population for speaking out.
It is never wise to give the far-left the benefit of the doubt on issue. However, even if Labour’s intentions are naive, this remains another instance where ideology enables evil.
Martin Frost will be sentenced on 17th April for burning pages of the Koran..
Why was his name released a few days after Salwan Momika was assassinated? Another scandal.
Frost burnt the Koran on 31st Jan. He was found guilty of ‘racially and religiously aggravated intentional, alarm, distress’ on 3rd February.
The court heard a passerby, the distressed victim of the crime, “When he began to burn the Koran my heart was about to break out. This is the most emotion I have ever felt.”
Welcome to England 2025.
Don’t we effectively already have blasphemy laws against Islam?
The Martin Frost trial.
If he had burnt a few pages of the Bible and someone had complained he would have done nothing wrong. There are no laws which protect Christianity in UK. But he burnt pages from the Koran. In Islamic countries there are laws against that.
There are no blasphemy laws in England. But there are laws which encompass religious hate.
The judge interpreted the law as if we are already an Islamic county.
The Islamic religion itself promotes hatred of the unbeliever on nearly every page. Why is this not called out and explanations requested of the faithful?
The Islamic movement have successfully picked up and coined the term Islamophobia from the rainbow movement. The very fabric of the word; an irrational fear based on feelings, lack of knowledge and negative experiences, places the person deemed Islamophobic outside normality, categorizing him/her as a person that needs treatment to overcome their deficiency. But the fear of Islam is very rational when you see the effects it has on society. And when you reflect on it, there is no such term as Jewophobia. No, it’s called antisemitism, and it is considered rational and widely considered as a sane view. And you can google a term like Christianophobia, but you will not find committees in any Muslim country elaborating on how to define the term of trying to work out how to deal with the public’s irrational fear of Christians.
What rationality is there in the tropes that some have about Jewish people?
There are those who can be found who despise Christianity. And do so with a visceral intensity. But there are no such beliefs about Christians as some have about Jews.
To assert that there is something called Christianophobia is as if it were claimed that the film Carrie was an example of it in the presentation of the religious practices of the deranged mother, who expires in sadomasochism, experiencing multiple orgasms, in the attitude of the mad, gothic, arrow-pierced depiction of the Christ-figure in the prayer room.
And, moreover, if it were asserted – conspiracy-theory-like – that the film was the inspiration for all the school massacres of subsequent decades. After all, Carrie is a victim who has a power greater than that of her persecutors. A characteristic of victimhood that is entirely a product of Christianity. At the same time, in fighting for Self as Self, it must be said that she does not bless those who cursed her. The film is somewhat rough cookery, much like any definition of (religious) – fill in the bank – phobia might be expected to be.
Anti semitism is considered a rational and sane view?
Please explain.
I think you are right in saying that not all prejudices (or not) have been medicalised as phobias. But you lose the track a bit in your comparison with antisemitism.
The real tragedy is that, instead of tiptoeing around Muslim sensibilities, we should be trying to persuade them to abandon the self-defeating mediaeval superstitions that have brought them and everyone else so much grief for more than a millennium.
Jamie Michael’s trial is reported by citizen’s journalism on X. I can’t find anything about it on MSM, although I might be wrong.
UK is now a laughingstock, or horror show, on X. Take your pick.
UK mainstream journalism is a disgrace. This article is another example. Pussyfooting around the main issue as always. Why does Labour prioritise Islam and Muslim groups and individuals over Christianity and everyone else? Why does no one investigate the relationship between Labour and Muslim votes and all the scandals and cover-up after cover-up?
This is a complete waste of time and resources.
All necessary legislation already exists. As usual, the most critical issue is the inability to police and enforce all the legislation we already have. Adding more laws can only lower the “hit rate” of leglisation as a whole and undermine faith in the rule of law.
That’s before we even consider the nonsense of legislating to protect only one exclusive minority group. This cannot be compatible with our supposed “equalities” and “universal human rights” pretensions. Of course, we’ve been so conditioned to this over the past three decades that most people don’t even notice the contradictions and dangers here.
The only “problem” Rayner and co are trying to solve here is their own party political support. Though they probably delude themselves that their work is somehow noble and ignore how destructive it actually is.
I’d suggest immediately firing anyone involved in this process. Misuse of public funds, etc.
Indeed. It also has the added advantage from the Left’s point of view of rubbing the native population’s nose in the fact that they are less worthy of special protection than a minority religion that contains a proportion of anti-western fanatics.
I am deeply offended by this charade which reveals “hatred” of the majority population but the police are unfortunately not going to be taking the members of this committee aside to check their thinking and warn them of the consequences of their biased proposals.
Why they think this will improve community relations is hard to fathom given that teacher’s pets usually attract greater opprobrium than they otherwise should have. An evenhanded approach to law and order is required rather than specially constructed definitions designed to stifle enquiry and criticism regarding a particular religion.
‘All necessary legislation already exists.’ What do you mean by that? That it already exists to imprison someone, like Martin Frost, who criticises Islam?
Some of you don’t like my comments but I shall keep going.
In Silenced Tommy Robinson says “The story of these two children is actually a story about free speech or the death of it.”
Labour don’t care for free speech. Do Unherd? Why don’t they tell Tommy Robinson’s side of the story, He will tell you clearly why we need Free Speech.
Yesterday there began another Free Speech trial. Jamie Michael is on trial for making a Facebook video a few days after the Southport atrocity.
Will Unherd have the courage to report on this?
A phobia is a mental illness. Is there is a mental illness about religion? If so, as illness, isn’t it the province of mental health services?
The riots of last Summer – the revolt in the North – were adequately dealt with by effective policing and custodial sentences. Such things can evidently still be delivered, to use the Prime Minister’s favourite word.
The author has tried to gild the lily. The word ‘unfounded’ is unnecessary. All conspiracy theories are unfounded.
There are risks of ‘establishing an anti-freedom charter which provides a specific religio-political milieu with special protections’? Wasn’t this sort of preference in law given to minorities that a reviled politician of the 1960s warned about? From gilding to gelding legitimate scholarly research.
Why should a law to prevent desecration of religious texts be confined to three religions? Is that a phobia of all the others? To pursue equality, shouldn’t the Hindu texts be protected from desecration?
Desecration implies the existence of the holy. That is, something that cannot be touched, is different by its nature from other – profane – things. Do UK lawmakers believe that there is the realm of the holy and that it exists in the country?
When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, there being no separation of church and state, blasphemy ceased to be just an offence against the church but also become an offence against the state.
I may add that the events in Bangladesh have revolved around NED and Soros sponsoring jihadists to carry out pogroms against Hindus in particular and also Christians and Buddhists; but one sees amnesia in the entire Western MSM.
Why should phobia be a coinage for only one creed?
Oh and the judge said at the Martin Frost trial. “This is a tolerant country but we just do not tolerate this behaviour.”
What has happened to England? The stupidity is bottomless.
And this is a direct consequence of not having free speech. People, including judges, cannot say what they are thinking. In place of that they often just spout out nonsense.
The judge is an example.
The more this government and the public blob talk about free speech but act as if they hate it, the more ordinary people are going to distrust them. They either don’t care or are too stupid to see the inevitable negative results of their naive and irresponsible actions.
I’m waiting for someone, anyone, to disagree with me.
What is there to disagree with? From what you have said, you make a lot of sense. No group, religion or otherwise should be treated any different under the law. Hating an ideology should not be an offence.
We are not talking about ‘should’. First state the facts. Acknowledge them. Think about the implications of this. In primary school and secondary achool there is only one religion you have to respect. By law. And that is Islam.
Look what happened to the Batley teacher who was run of his school in 2021. Not a single politician stood up for him. More media silence. Another cover-up. How many people even know his name? How many people know the school was in the same Local Council area as Almondbury Community Scool which was immediately closed down by Oftsed after the non-racist racist incident there? Kirklees Council.
If one religion is to have special laws protecting it shouldn’t it be The Church of England as we are in England?
Your comments are relevant to the topic. It doesn’t matter whether anyone disagrees or not (i don’t disagree, for instance) but when you veer off topic whilst commenting on other articles and criticise Unherd whilst – and this article is the perfect example – claiming Unherd never addresses these issues, you just come across in a very juvenile manner, and the rest of us deserve better than having to scroll through that.
Take note, if you’re capable of doing so.
Go away. Shoo.
I’ll take that as “No, i’m not capable of taking note”.
And no, for as long as you keep trolling Unherd, you’ll get pushback. Your contributions pale into insignificance compared to the value that Unherd brings to discourse outside the msm.
You are correct. If we are going to say destroying a holy book of one religion is against the law then destroying a holy book of all and any religion must also be so. If that is not to be the case then any law specifically applied to Islam must be resisted with extreme prejudice.
Is there a “Muslim penalty” or is it that Muslims penalize themselves by being the kind of people of whom “more than two in five British Muslims believed their co-religionist compatriots tended to be more loyal to Saudi Arabia, . . . than to the UK”? It’s a free country, so if Muslims want to consciously dissociate themselves from it, that’s their right, but that exercise of freedom of association goes both ways.
What a stupid article. Labour prefers Islam and blasphemy law rather than Free Speech. They control the parliament, and enact laws that reflect their political preferences.
You know, unlike Tory eunuchs who spent most of the last 20 years in Downing Street yet couldn’t make any significant step toward addressing their voters demand (except maybe increasing pensions).
After everything that has happened in the last few months, *this* is the priority? Words fail me.
The writing is on the wall and iit reads from the right to left
Looks like the front door to me.
Not just arrested – by some 20+ officers – but charged and kept in custody with inciting racial hatred.
‘Desecrating’ a copy of the Koran is already viewed by the police and presumably the CPS who must have authorised the charge, as a crime.
Quite simply, a ‘phobia’ is an irrational fear. There’s nothing irrational about a fear of being blown up, knifed, raped, or heinously tortured.
I’d say let’s see what it comes up with. We know there is considerable anti-muslim prejudice, mainly from folks who’ve probably never met or worked with a Muslim in their life, but we also know we cannot limit religious criticism. It’s a British secular value. For all the publicity Unherd likes to give Tahir Ali absolutely no chance Labour repeals the law it introduced to abolish blasphemy (and remember it was a Lab govt that abolished it). Incitement is different and book burning in a certain context is deliberate incitement. No need for it. The sort of criticism likes of Chris Hitchens would have delivered (and jeez do i wish he was still with us) wouldn’t have required that sort of rubbish and would have demolished blasphemy twaddle much better.
There is though a cohort of Right wingers who want to stoke tension here. Braverman the worst with her we’ll all be living in a Sharia state in 20yrs with the UK the first Muslim Nuclear armed Nation clap-trap. Thing is though some cretins actually get intoxicated by this nonsense forgetting currently only 6% of population are Muslim and vast majority of them don’t want Islamist rubbish anymore than rest of us. If Braverman et al swopped Muslim for Jew the sort of thing they are saying would be more widely condemned on the Right. Be careful how blind you become.