The great Islamophobia con

So now it’s racist to criticise ISIS? In its latest report on the British media’s coverage of Islam and Muslims, the Muslim Council of Britain describes me as ‘Islamophobic’. What racist speechcrime did I commit in the eyes of these self-elected spokespeople for the UK’s Muslim community? I once wondered out loud, on TV no less, why we are very quick to describe white-nationalist terrorists as neo-fascists – quite rightly – but less quick to use that f-word in relation to ISIS. ‘[It] is very rare’, I said on Sky News, ‘that you hear the word fascism used in relation to Islamist extremists’. This struck me as odd, given that Islamist extremists are hyper-violent and alarmingly regressive and are currently ‘a greater threat to our society’ than white-nationalist nutters are.

For that, for making a strong-worded criticism of ISIS militants who have murdered thousands of people, the MCB has defamed me as a promoter of ‘fringe Islamophobic ideas’. The MCB says the fact I was allowed publicly to muse over the possibility that ISIS is a tad fascistic highlights the ‘inherent danger’ of allowing voices like mine into the mainstream media. Let us take a moment to reflect on how preposterous and outright immoral this implication of racism is. I made those comments in the wake of ISIS’s mass slaughter of Christians in Sri Lanka in March 2019. Three churches and three hotels were targeted by suicide bombers. More than 250 people were killed. Entire congregations were wiped out as they celebrated the most important day in the Christian calendar. One of the bombers blew himself up among children who were attending Sunday school. Fourteen kids were killed. A 12-year-old boy had to be identified by his teeth. He, along with his classmates, had been literally incinerated for the crime of being a Christian. And the Muslim Council of Britain thinks I’m a racist for asking if the monsters responsible for this crime are possibly neo-fascists?

This isn’t only defamatory – it is depraved. One is forced to ask how an organisation that can take such a morally inverted view, that can publicly denounce a journalist for strongly criticising some of the most degenerate terrorists of the modern era, can be treated seriously by the media and by sections of the political class. Imagine if, following the racist act of barbarism carried out by Brenton Tarrant at two mosques in Christchurch in New Zealand in March 2019, a political organisation here in the UK branded journalists as ‘anti-white’ or ‘whitephobic’ for referring to Tarrant as a fascist. Imagine if they had said, ‘I think you’ll find “fascism” isn’t the right word for this. Stop being prejudiced against white people.’ Imagine the uproar. Yet the MCB is essentially doing this in relation to me and my comments about ISIS’s mass murder of Sri Lankan Christians, and we’re expected to think this is normal.