February 5, 2025 - 7:00am

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.


Dr Rakib Ehsan is a researcher specialising in British ethnic minority socio-political attitudes, with a particular focus on the effects of social integration and intergroup relations.

 

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