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Will Angela Rayner ban criticism of Islam?

New rules on ‘Islamophobia’ would chill discussion about anything even tangentially related to Islam.

Fraser Myers

Fraser Myers
Deputy editor

Topics Free Speech Politics UK

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Less than 24 hours after a man in Manchester was convicted of a hate crime for burning the Koran, news has emerged of the UK government’s plans for further restrictions on what can be said about Islam.

As the Telegraph reports, UK deputy prime minister Angela Rayner, in her role as communities secretary, is setting up a council to advise her on drawing up an official government definition of ‘Islamophobia’. Although it is presented in the language of tackling prejudice, discrimination and abuse faced by British Muslims, we can be certain that the government will attempt to ringfence criticism of Islam itself – and perhaps even of Islamic fundamentalism and extremism.

We know this thanks to past attempts to define and combat so-called Islamophobia. Most notable is the definition drawn up by the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on British Muslims in 2019. This definition is so broad that it effectively treats criticism of any aspect of Islam, or indeed behaviour by Muslims, Islamists and Muslim-majority states, as a form of racial discrimination. The report explicitly mentions debates on everything from gender segregation in Islam, the Israel-Palestine conflict, the history of Islamic colonialism, Islamist terrorism, immigration from Muslim-majority countries, modern-day Islamic governments and even the grooming-gangs scandal. The restrictions it would place on speech are staggering.

The APPG report does raise concerns about what a broad definition of Islamophobia might mean for free speech, but only to dismiss them. In one jaw-dropping paragraph, paraphrasing an outside submission to the review, it ridicules ‘the notion of free speech and a supposed right to criticise Islam’ as effectively trojan horses for spreading ‘anti-Muslim racism’.

Will Rayner’s official definition be so dismissive of our right to free speech? Almost certainly. Tipped to chair her advisory council is none other than Dominic Grieve, a former Tory MP who wrote an approving foreword to the APPG’s wildly censorious proposals. What’s more, the Labour Party has also adopted the definition for internal party matters. All the signs point to this definition, or one very much like it, being turned into official policy.

Worse, this is not even the Labour government’s only initiative aimed at restricting criticism of Islam. Home secretary Yvette Cooper and security minister Dan Jarvis recently confirmed their intentions to ramp up the use of non-crime hate incidents to tackle Islamophobia. This will empower police to make records of anyone who causes offence by speaking out of turn on any matter related to Muslims or Islam.

It is hard to overstate just how dangerous all of this is. A raft of laws against so-called hate speech has already created a de facto Islamic blasphemy law, as illustrated by yesterday’s conviction of a man who burned the Koran in Manchester for a ‘racially aggravated public-order offence’. We already have Islamist mobs threatening ‘blasphemers’ with impunity (none of the religious hardliners who forced a teacher in Batley into hiding for showing a Muhammad cartoon has ever faced any legal consequences). Our institutions are already paralysed by fears of accusations of ‘Islamophobia’, from the Prevent counter-extremism scheme, which is reluctant to intervene against extreme Islamism, to police forces across the country who allowed Pakistani Muslim grooming gangs to roam free to avoid upsetting the multicultural peace. A further chilling of speech and open discussion on these matters is recklessly and willfully courting disaster.

The crusade against ‘Islamophobia’ may use the modern jargon of multiculturalism, hate speech and communal relations, but its effect is to revive a medieval regime of censorship in order to protect a seventh-century religion. We have a duty to blaspheme against this new order.

Fraser Myers is deputy editor at spiked and host of the spiked podcast. Follow him on X: @FraserMyers.

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