Brendan O'Neill: Why we must fight for the right to criticise Islam

A government clampdown on ‘Islamophobia’ would inflame social tensions, not dampen them.

So much for Keir Starmer’s ‘new dawn’ for Britain. He seems more likely to drag us back to the Dark Ages. According to reports, the PM is thinking about adopting a definition of ‘Islamophobia’ that could lead to people being censured if they say something too stinging about Islam. That is, if they commit the sin of blasphemy, if they make a scurrilous utterance about the Prophet or his followers. Starmer strode into Downing St a month ago wanging on about the ‘sunlight of hope’ – now he threatens to cover Britain with the black cloud of medieval censorship.

The Telegraph says Starmer and his deputy, Angela Rayner, are weighing up a ‘range of views’ on whether to roll out a scarily broad definition of ‘Islamophobia’. Drawn up by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims a few years back, the definition holds that ‘Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness’. Expressions of Muslimness? Like the burqa, say? Or the Koran itself? Or the sincerely held Islamic belief that apostasy is one of the worst offences a Muslim can commit? If you were to ‘target’ such ‘expressions of Muslimness’ – with criticism, mockery, maybe even satire – might you find yourself damned as ‘racist’?

I would be fine with the government adopting a definition of anti-Muslim bigotry, which we might describe as ‘the targeting of Muslims with harassment or violence’. But the demonisation of speech that targets expressions of Muslimness is a different beast entirely. It is chilling. It implicitly proposes not only the protection of people from harm – which we can all agree with – but also the protection of ideas from ridicule. The protection of religious ‘expressions’ – literally – from supposedly dangerous derision. Muslims deserve safety, of course. But Muslimness? Not so much. No belief, god, prophet, fad or book should ever be shielded from discussion, or even disdain.

If Labour does adopt this definition of ‘Islamophobia’, that won’t make it legally binding. It wouldn’t be against the law – not yet, anyway – to make fun of ‘expressions of Muslimness’ (ie, Islamic ideas). Blasphemers against Muhammad won’t be dragged to Trafalgar Square for a pelting with rotten fruit. But organisations across the land – from the police to the judiciary, universities to private companies – would be encouraged to embrace and act on the definition. And the consequences of that would be dire. Good luck saying ‘The niqab is sexist as hell’ or ‘The Koran is bullshit’ in the canteen of a workplace that has enshrined this diktat that says bristling at ‘expressions of Muslimness’ is a species of racism.

We don’t even have to wait for the Labour government to roll out this definition to see how harmful to liberty the Islamophobia obsession can be. There has been an informal stricture against anti-Islamic blasphemy for years in this country. People have been sacked, blacklisted and even hounded into hiding for the supposed sin of rolling their eyes at ‘expressions of Muslimness’. Who can forget the grandad sacked from Asda for sharing on his Facebook page a Billy Connolly skit that made fun of Islam. Or the train conductor given the heave-ho for greeting the end of lockdown and the reopening of pubs with the words ‘Thank fuck’ because surely none of us wants to live in a ‘Muslim alcohol-free caliphate’. Or the time the gymnast Louis Smith was suspended from his sport for two months after a video emerged showing him pissed and ‘appearing to mock Islam’. Out, blasphemer!

So we already have a situation where you can be censured – severely – for mocking Islam. In Iran you get 74 lashes for dissing Allah, here you’ll get a tongue-lashing and maybe lose your job. Morally, though, it amounts to the same thing: punishment for blasphemy.

There have been more sinister acts of censure, too. Last year a 14-year-old schoolboy in Wakefield was suspended from school for lightly ‘scuffing’ a copy of the Koran. The police, in shameful mimicry of Iran’s morality cops, launched an investigation into this supposed ‘hate incident’. Oh, just say it: blasphemous incident. The boy’s mother was pressured to make a pitiful public apology. It was a grotesque spectacle: a mum begging for mercy for her supposedly ungodly kid, like something out of Afghanistan.

Then there’s the case of the Batley Grammar schoolteacher chased into hiding by a fundamentalist mob. His transgression? He showed his pupils an image of Muhammad during a classroom discussion on blasphemy and free speech. That was in 2021. He’s till in hiding in 2024, so ferocious were the insults and death threats he received for ‘insulting’ the Prophet. That Labour is considering rolling out an even more stringent definition of ‘Islamophobia’ in this climate is abominable. It would inflame fanaticism. It would embolden the fundamentalists. It would lead to more people being driven into the shadows by mobs outraged by their ‘blasphemy’. The government will endanger the liberty and even the lives of its citizens if it embraces this edict against anti-Islamic speech.

Officialdom’s dumbest belief is that the solution to social tensions is censorship. The riots of the past week, which included acts of blatant anti-Muslim bigotry, seem to have convinced some in positions of power that we need firmer rules on ‘Islamophobia’ pronto. The activist class is pressuring the government to more ‘clearly codify’ the concept of Islamophobia in order to tackle ‘rising prejudice towards Muslims’. The folly of this is incalculable. More censure of anti-Islam blasphemy would not bring peace to a broken country. It would do the opposite. It would deepen the trenches of cultural warfare and further inflame social disarray.

Labour’s blasphemy law by the backdoor would do two devastating things. First, it would fortify the Islamist fanatics. It would give a licence to their intolerance. It would tell them they are right to feel aggrieved by criticism of their religion, and right to seek the punishment of whoever made the criticism. It would give official weight to their regressive urge to crush all anti-Islam profanity. And second, it would generate resentment among many non-Muslims. If Starmer doesn’t want to be known as ‘Two Tier Keir’, then he should be very careful not to create a situation where you can say whatever the hell you like about Christ and the Bible but you’ll face violent exile from everyday life if you speak ill of Allah or the Koran. The elites’ war on ‘Islamophobia’ acutally makes anti-Muslim bigotry worse, by making some wonder why Muslims’ way of life is afforded greater protection from insult than ‘our way of life’.

Censorship is the midwife of instability, even of violence. In communicating to certain sections of society that their belief system is so perfect that no mere mortal or riff-raff may ever ridicule it, it fosters arrogance, intolerance and conflict. It privileges the feelings of some over the liberties of others, and there’s no clearer recipe for social discord than that. If we are serious about addressing the crisis of integration, then we should be promoting liberty, not intolerance. We should be saying that everyone in Britain is free to believe what he wants, and everyone else is free to say his beliefs are bollocks. That’s the British way. Freedom for all. The freedom of belief and the freedom of dissent. No special treatment, for anyone. There’s a name for it: equality.

Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and blogs regularly on Spiked where this article was sourced.