Anti-Muslim hate is vile and must be fought. But a sweeping definition of Islamophobia risks silencing criticism of Islamism – undermining free expression and aiding extremists
July 10, 2025 11:42
Readers of the JC of all people do not need me to point out that bigotry is wrong. And when that bigotry turns into discrimination, or even violence, it is right that the law should – as it now does – step in. That applies to bigotry whether it is targeting Catholics, Hindus, Sikhs, Jews and, of course, Muslims. Hate crimes against Muslims, which are on the rise, should be prosecuted with the full force of the law.
But it is one thing protecting individual Muslims, individual Jews and individual Christians from attack – and quite another protecting Islam, Judaism and Christianity (or any other belief) from criticism. That is the fundamental problem with the concept of Islamophobia, which has entered the mainstream, but which seeks to forbid criticism of Islam itself – and which is now being defined, for adoption by the government, by a commission set up by deputy prime minister Angela Rayner.
In 2018 the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims proposed a definition which was immediately adopted by the Labour Party, which held that “Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.” So wide-ranging and all-embracing is this definition that almost any criticism or even scrutiny of Islam falls under it. It is difficult to imagine that the definition which will be proposed by Rayner’s commission will be less all-encompassing, not least because the man chosen to chair it, former Conservative Attorney General Dominic Grieve, wrote the foreword to that 2018 report. The entire point of setting up the commission and imposing a formal definition of Islamophobia seems to be to render criticism of Islam beyond the pale. Labour is in fear of the rise of more of the sectarian Muslim candidates who won four seats in 2024, and the adoption of a government definition of Islamophobia appears to be one response.
The commission is now engaged in a supposed consultation over the definition. But the consultation is a con. Conservative MP Nick Timothy, who is leading a campaign against what will be – and has always been intended to be – a new Islamic blasphemy law, has exposed how the consultation was rigged, being confined to a secret group of organisations (the government has refused to identify which groups have been involved) which have clearly been chosen to provide the results the government wants. It was only after Timothy’s campaigning – and his publication of the form on social media, to allow others to express their view – that the consultation form was officially published earlier this week.
We are in dangerous waters here. It is fundamental to democracy and freedom that ideas of any sort are subject to scrutiny – and no religion should ever be above that scrutiny. In the case of Islam, it is vital that extremists who operate within Muslim communities are subject to exposure and scrutiny. As we know all too well, much of that extremism is directed against Jews, but Jews are obviously not the only target, as the 20th anniversary of the 7/7 bombs brings home tragically.
In this context, a report published this week by the Policy Exchange think tank is vital reading. It exposes in devastating detail how the label of Islamophobia is already used by those who seek either to shut down all criticism of Islam, to protect Islamists, or to push a particular conservative strand of Islam. Even now, when Islamophobia has no officially backed definition, it is already used to seek to silence coverage of Islamism and Islam itself. I know this from my own experience when I was editor of the JC. We were repeatedly accused of Islamophobia whenever we exposed Islamists. The intention was obvious – to bully us into dropping our coverage (which was never going to happen) and to devalue our coverage in the eyes of others by painting us as racists (which, to judge from social media, certainly did happen). Imagine how much worse this will be when there is a definition which lends credence to such accusations.
I recommend reading the Policy Exchange report, Bad Faith Actor: A study of the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM), in full. It looks at how the CfMM is not the objective, impartial force for balance it claims to be but an offshoot of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) with a specific agenda.
CfMM’s founder, Miqdaad Versi, claims that the British media is one of “the biggest drivers of Islamophobia in the country…misrepresenting Muslims, misusing terminology
or misinterpreting Islamic beliefs and practices are common occurrences in the media with almost one in ten articles analysed by CfMM falling under this category.” CfMM claims that around 60 per cent of news stories about Muslims are negative, which it says proves the media’s “widespread… Islamophobia”. This statistic is regularly cited by politicians and campaigners.
But when Policy Exchange dug into CfMM’s own data, it showed a very different result: “It says it has monitored over 200,000 articles and analysed almost 60,000 ‘online print and broadcast clips’ about Muslims. Across all those, and across its entire seven-year existence, the Ipso database records that only one complaint by CfMM has resulted in a newspaper being required by the regulator to make a correction. CfMM also complains directly to news outlets, though it has made very inconsistent claims about the number of corrections it has secured by this route, ranging from 22, to 100, to 300. Even 300 corrections, however, is a minute proportion (around one-tenth of one per cent) of the 260,000 items it claims to have monitored. It does not come close to supporting Versi’s and CfMM’s sweeping claims of a tide of media Islamophobia, or of almost 10 per cent of stories about Muslims being wrong.”
CfMM’s real purpose, as its own site says, is “taking control of the narrative” about Islam – by promoting and pressurising the adoption of the MCB’s specific view of Islam. It demands that journalists should never use the words “Islamism”, “Islamic extremism” or “Muslim extremism” and attacks journalists for describing terror groups, including Hamas, as Islamist.
The point here is that CfMM currently operates in what is effectively a vacuum. Its arguments only carry weight if those it criticises choose to be cowed by it, or if bodies chose to lend it credence (as press regulator IPSO has done by allowing Versi to act as an adviser).
But once there is an official definition of so-called Islamophobia, backed by the government – and possibly legislation criminalising Islamophobia – then we will have entered a whole new ball game, in which we will have handed over the policing of free speech and our freedom to criticise aspects of one specific religion and the actions of some of its adherents to the very people whose record and agenda themselves give cause for concern.
An earlier version of this article stated ‘CfMM has also criticised TV dramas which show Muslim characters who do not want to wear a hijab, or who drink alcohol, or who are gay.’ Although this was part of the Policy Exchange report, it over simplifies CfMM’s position, which is to challenge dramas where the complex realities of Muslim lives are simplified into binary conflicts between "tradition" and "modernity".
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