by Mike Judge, Evangelical Times
There is something deeply troubling about a government asking the country to adopt a definition of ‘Islamophobia’ while simultaneously deleting the evidence on which that definition was based. A Freedom of Information request has revealed that the Department for Housing, Communities and Local Government has deleted all the submissions made to the working group which drew up the definition.
Shadow justice secretary Nick Timothy MP has now written to Communities Secretary Angela Rayner demanding answers. He asks whether the government received any input from groups subject to a no-contact policy. He asks whether the government will publish a list of those who submitted evidence. These are reasonable questions. The public has a right to know who was calling for this definition – and who wanted an even more restrictive o
[…] According to the Free Speech Union, the Communities Secretary Angela Rayner promised that the group which drafted the definition would consist of varying voices with different opinions. But in actual fact she appointed a Working Group in which all five members had previously expressed sympathetic views on the need for such a definition.
The Free Speech Union says that all five members of the Working Group had troubling links to Islamist organisations, including MEND and the Muslim Council of Britain, with which successive governments have adopted a policy of non-engagement due to their extremist views. Despite repeated lines of questioning from journalists and politicians, the government has refused to confirm or deny the involvement of these troubling extremist groups.