by Steven Greer, spiked
Labour’s new definition of Islamophobia will silence vital public debate.
The University of Sussex was fined £585,000 last month by the Office for Students, the universities regulator, for failing to protect Kathleen Stock’s freedom of speech. In 2021, Professor Stock was hounded out of her job by a censorious mob that accused her of ‘transphobia’. Around the same time, the University of Bristol also refused to defend my own academic freedom, in the name of combatting ‘Islamophobia’.
In a social-media campaign, the University of Bristol Islamic Society (BRISOC) denounced me as an Islamophobe and called for my dismissal. This was because I had referred students to literature on Islam and human rights that BRISOC members thought cast their faith in a negative light. Although I was unequivocally exonerated by an official inquiry, the university nevertheless announced that it ‘recognised’ BRISOC’s ‘concerns’ about me. Bristol also removed the ‘Islam, China and the Far East’ module from my Human Rights in Law, Politics and Society course, in order to protect the ‘sensitivities’ of those taking it.
There is a grave risk that the working group recently appointed by the UK government to define ‘Islamophobia’ may make the misfortune I endured more likely for others. Deputy prime minister Angela Rayner announced the working group earlier this year, claiming that establishing an official Islamophobia definition would be a ‘crucial step’ in tackling anti-Muslim hate crime. The group is chaired by former Conservative attorney general Dominic Grieve KC, who wrote the foreword for the now notorious 2018 All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) report on Islamophobia. This produced a definition that is unhelpfully broad. It classifies Islamophobia as a ‘type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness’. If the definition created by Rayner’s working group ends up anything like the APPG one, we are in serious trouble.