Islamophobia and the dangers of chilling discourse

This week, the release of the Casey report on group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse (grooming gangs) laid bare the failures that prevented abuse against children being properly investigated.

As the Government announced a public inquiry into the scandal, Louise Casey said for too long the authorities had shied away from the ethnicity of the people involved, adding it was "not racist to examine the ethnicity of the offenders".

This is perhaps best illustrated by the treatment of Ann Cryer. In 2002, when she was Labour MP for Keighley, Cryer became the first public figure in Britain to speak out about young white girls being abused in Rotherham by grooming gangs from the Pakistani community.

Cryer was shouted down as a racist in meetings and found local councils "were petrified of being called racist and so reverted to the default of political correctness".

"There was a certain point when I felt like giving the whole thing up because I was being called a racist," she said.

Cryer's experience should serve as a lesson that silencing voices which confront uncomfortable truths is dangerous and counterproductive.

More recently, accusations of racism have often been framed as 'Islamophobia'. The term is widely used to describe perceived prejudice or discriminatory attitudes against Muslims. However, it is also used as a shield to stifle debate and scrutiny, effectively discouraging critical discussions about issues within Muslim communities by framing dissent as prejudiced or bigoted – including in relation to the grooming gangs scandal.

The Labour MP for Rotherham Sarah Champion was nominated in the "Islamophobe of the year awards" in 2018 by the Islamic Human Rights Commission (a registered charity whose chair was recently found to have praised Hezbollah) after she spoke out about gangs of British Pakistani men raping and trafficking children as young as eleven.

She said later: "To be accused of racism is probably the worst thing you can call me. That fear will motivate me to step away from a lot of topics I'd maybe tackle head on if I didn't have that phobia."

In 2011, investigative journalist Andrew Norfolk broke the grooming gang story for The Times, shedding light on a troubling pattern of systematic sexual abuse involving white teenage girls and predominantly Pakistani men in Rotherham and other northern towns.

His revelations exposed the complicity among social workers, police, and local councillors, many of whom failed to act for fear of being accused of racism.

While Norfolk's reporting earned him journalistic accolades, including the Orwell Prize and the Paul Foot Award, it also drew intense backlash from groups that sought to frame his work 'Islamophobic".

All of this should give the government working group currently developing a definition of 'Islamophobia' pause for thought. Could the work they are doing contribute to a climate where necessary scrutiny and dialogue is chilled, leaving vulnerable communities unprotected?

Successive governments have been under pressure from Muslim advocacy groups to adopt a contentious 'Islamophobia' definition proposed by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims, which defines 'Islamophobia' as "a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness".

The previous Government refused to do so based on its incompatibility with the Equality Act (which defines which defines race in terms of colour, nationality and national or ethnic origins, rather than religion) and because of the potential for "severe consequences for freedom of speech".

The current Government has also acknowledged this definition is 'not in line' with the Equality Act 2010. It has therefore set up a working group to develop a working definition of anti-Muslim hatred/Islamophobia which is "reflective of a wide range of perspectives and priorities for British Muslims".

The concept of Islamophobia unhelpfully blurs the lines between genuine prejudice against Muslims and legitimate criticism of beliefs, ideas, and practices associated with Islam. This ambiguity is too easily weaponised to silence critical discussions and suppress uncomfortable truths.

This can have profoundly damaging consequences. As Louise Casey pointed out in her review into integration in 2016: "Too many public institutions, national and local, state and non-state, have gone so far to accommodate diversity and freedom of expression that they have ignored or even condoned regressive, divisive and harmful cultural and religious practices, for fear of being branded racist or Islamophobic".

As a society, we need to identify and confront those who seek to incite anti-Muslim prejudice and stigmatise entire communities. Some people are undoubtably attracted to the grooming gangs scandal for that purpose. But we can't allow the concept of Islamophobia to hinder our obligation to protect children, defend equality, and uphold human rights.

Anti-Muslim prejudice is a genuine issue. However, a government-backed definition of anti-Muslim hatred or Islamophobia risks exacerbating the problem further. At a time when there's a perception of 'two-tier justice', one religion being ringfenced for special treatment is unlikely to enhance community cohesion – or the lives of British Muslims.

There is a strong case for pausing the work of the Islamophobia working group until the national inquiry into grooming gangs has concluded, as there may be important lessons to be learned from it.

Regardless of the recommendations that eventually come from the working group, the Government must ensure that the freedom to speak out against harmful beliefs and practices remains fully intact.