Labour’s crackdown on “Islamophobia” is yet another crackdown on free speech

I warned this would happen —and now it’s happening

MATT GOODWIN FEB 6

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Well, I did warn you this would happen and now it’s happening. Labour’s crackdown on free speech in this country is about to move up a gear.

Since coming to power only a few months ago, Keir Starmer’s Labour government has already moved to undermine free speech on multiple fronts.

Labour has defanged an important law to protect free speech in our universities, a law I helped create. Since the Southport atrocities, the party’s also expanded the deeply Orwellian ‘non-crime hate incidents’, which will be used to try and control debate.

Labour’s also sought to stigmatise political opposition to its project by describing millions of people, including those who ask tough questions about the rape gangs, as ‘far right’. And, meanwhile, the party’s said nothing at all about Labour activists and politicians openly calling to shut down GB News and “kill” Elon Musk’s X platform.

And now, as I predicted, we learn that this deeply authoritarian Labour government is pressing ahead with a draconian new definition of ‘Islamophobia’ which will further erode free speech, free expression, and entirely legitimate debate about Islam and its compatibility with Western ways of life.

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What’s Labour planning to do, exactly?

Well, as reported yesterday, the Labour government, under Angela Rayner, is planning to create a new ‘council on Islamophobia’, which will ‘help advise on drawing up an official government definition for anti-Muslim discrimination’.

And if the idea of Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner deciding what you can or cannot say about this issue does not alarm you then some of the other details certainly will.

Like the fact that liberal Tory Dominic Grieve is being ‘recommended’ to chair the new council —a man so comfortable with free speech in this country that after the Brexit referendum he spent years demanding that the British people be forced to vote again in a second referendum, presumably so they could make the ‘right’ decision.

More importantly, like the Labour Party, Grieve also endorsed a controversial report by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG), published in 2018, which set out a definition of ‘Islamophobia’ that will almost certainly be adopted by Starmer’s Labour government and then, in turn, imposed on public institutions and the rest of us.

And what is this definition of ‘Islamophobia’, exactly? Well, here’s where we encounter a much bigger problem than Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner, and Dominic Grieve. The definition that I suspect is about to be imposed on us is so vague and broad that it will, inevitably, end up stifling free speech and debate about Islam.

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‘Islamophobia’, we’re told, ‘is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness’. But what does this even mean?

What counts as targeting ‘expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness’? Anything that will be perceived as ‘Islamophobic’ by Muslims and their self-selected representatives — that’s what.

Examples of Islamophobia, we’re told, include ‘making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Muslims as such, or of Muslims as a collective group, such as, especially but not exclusively, conspiracies about Muslim entryism in politics, government, or other societal institutions’.

What happens, then, if the British people want to debate the fact, supported by rigorous surveys, that nearly one-third of British Muslims think the implementation of Sharia law in Britain over the next twenty years is ‘desirable’, or that nearly 40% of all British Muslims and nearly half of all young Muslims in this country think the formation of a political party for Muslims would be desirable? Would this be considered ‘Islamophobic’, an attack on ‘perceived Muslimness’?

And if ‘conspiracies about Muslim entryism in politics’ is ‘Islamophobic’ then what happens if, say, somebody wants to highlight the fact there are already highly organised and well-resourced activist groups in Britain telling four million Muslims how to vote at national elections and what to demand politically? If we want to debate this obvious sectarianism in our politics would this be considered ‘Islamophobic’, too?

Or what about the fact that Muslims are nearly twice as likely as the average British person to think it’s perfectly acceptable to protest outside the home of a politician if that politician happens to hold a different view on Israel and Palestine? Would calling this out, would defending our democracy, also be considered ‘Islamophobic’ at some point in the future, as some kind of attack on ‘perceived Muslimness’?

And if ‘conspiracies about Muslim entryism’ into our national political life, laws, and institutions are included in this remarkably vague definition then what are we to do with the finding that while only 16% of British people think it should be illegal to show a picture or cartoon of Mohammed, more than half of all Muslims think it should? Would defending our existing laws be seen as an attack on ‘perceived Muslimness’, would standing up for the Batley school teacher be ‘Islamophobic’?

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Bizarrely, if you question these claims of ‘Islamophobia’ then that also makes you an Islamophobe. According to the report, even daring to suggest that Muslims or presumably their representatives might be ‘inventing or exaggerating Islamophobia’ is … you guessed it … ‘Islamophobic’. Ask questions about Islam and you risk being stained as an Islamophobe; question the scale of Islamophobia in modern Britain and that also makes you an Islamophobe. It’s not hard at all, in other words, to see how in this way the public square is curtailed and entirely legitimate debate is shut down.

Just as worrying is that ‘claims of a demographic ‘threat’ posed by Muslims or of a ‘Muslim takeover’ are cited as yet another example of ‘Islamophobia’. But where is the line here? What happens, say, if I decide to write a Substack post highlighting rigorous and reliable forecasts which show how Europe’s Muslim population will exceed 58 million by the year 2030 and, if European nations continue to pursue mass immigration, then by the year 2050 the share of populations that is Muslim could reach 31% in Sweden, 20% in Germany, 18% in France, and 17% in the UK, just 25 years from now?

If somebody out there —say a self-styled representative of Muslim communities— decides that this debate about demographic change is ‘threatening’, or ‘targeting Muslims’, then will this critical debate about how our nations and cultures are being completely transformed also be shut down in the name of protecting Muslims from ‘emotional harm’? Will free speech and free expression be sacrificed on the altar of prioritising the emotional safety of just one minority group?

Suggesting that some Muslims might be ‘incapable of living harmoniously in plural societies’ is also considered ‘Islamophobia’. But what then are we to make of the finding that British Muslims are considerably more likely than the average British person to believe various anti-Semitic tropes, such as that Jews have ‘too much power’, to voice support for extremist terrorist groups like Hamas, to believe Israel does not have a right to exist, to think that homosexuality should be made illegal (a view supported by more than one in four Muslims), and gay marriage should be outlawed in modern Britain. By pointing to such empirical findings, by suggesting that —actually, yes— some Muslims do appear incapable of living harmoniously in modern, plural, liberal societies, am I being ‘Islamophobic’?

Lastly, and even more astonishingly given recent events, the report even mentions the ‘grooming gangs’ or rape gangs scandal as another example of ‘Islamophobia’. Apparently, suggesting that some Muslims might want to ‘subjugate minority groups’ or are ‘sex groomers’ is another example of attacking ‘perceived Muslimness’.

So what happens if somebody wants to discuss why victims of the rape gangs have very clearly explained how their abusers often sought to justify this sickening abuse and torture by pointing to their Islamic faith —variously telling their young, white, non-Muslim victims they should be raped for “not obeying Allah”, were “worthless Kaffir girls”, and having parts of the Quran read to them before they were abused?

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Clearly, most Muslims would strongly reject any association between their Islamic faith and the actions of the predominantly Pakistani Muslim rape gangs. But the blunt reality is that as a free society we must always be able to have an open, frank, and rigorous debate about issues like this without having to worry about being shut down and stigmatised as ‘Islamophobic’. After all, doing this is exactly what led to the rape gangs scandal being downplayed and ignored for decades in the first place.

I could go on. But the key point is that the more and more I read through the thinking that underpins this looming definition of ‘Islamophobia’ that will almost certainly be embraced by Labour and then imposed on the rest of us the more I am deeply alarmed about the direction of travel and the very real threat this will pose to free speech.

As the Telegraph remarked this week, seen through the eyes of many critics this new definition is nothing more than a ‘a de facto blasphemy law’ which ‘stifles legitimate criticism of Islam as a religion’. And when it comes to those critics I am certainly one of them.