All the worst people like the ‘anti-Muslim hostility’ definition

Not worried enough yet by the government’s new definition of ‘anti-Muslim hostility’? Here’s another red flag: the mild, nuanced, or downright supportive responses it’s received from some of the worst people in Britain. In the week or so since the definition was published, I’ve been tracking reactions across British Islam’s vast cosmos of professional offence-takers and grievance-mongers – sorry, diverse’n’vibrant civil society groups.

Take Muslim Engagement and Development (Mend), the organisation which has, in the past, suggested that Britain ‘treats all Muslims as criminal.’ They promote the claim that Muslims make up nine-tenths of counter-terror stops at airports (the true figure is less than a third) and the organisation’s head of policy said that Britain and Europe are so Islamophobic that we ‘may already be close’ to the conditions that allowed the Holocaust.

The government has already said that the definition ‘may need to evolve over time’ Mend openly seeks to use an official definition of Islamophobia to weaken Britain’s immigration and terrorism laws: in its words, to ‘carry out structural analyses of discriminatory policies embedded within, for example, immigration [and] counter-terrorism legislation’. It wants to challenge ‘policy failures’, such as ‘how Muslims are unfairly targeted in counter-terrorism laws’. (Your regular reminder: 94 per cent of all terrorism-related deaths in Great Britain since 1999 have been caused by Islamist terrorism.)

Mend is not wholly happy with the new definition of anti-Muslim hostility but calls it a ‘crucial first step’ towards its deeply worrying apparent goals. That is, of course, correct. Among the many problems with the definition, this supposed ‘compromise’ wording is a wedge, a slippery slope, something for those who claim Britain is Islamophobic to build on. The government has indeed already said that the definition ‘may need to evolve over time’.

Most popular Then there is an even worse organisation, Cage, whose research director once proclaimed the Isis executioner Mohammed Emwazi – better known as Jihadi John – to be ‘a beautiful young man’. The organisation admitted it ‘made mistakes’ in the wake of the comments. Cage’s response to the ‘anti-Muslim hostility’ definition was to post an article which said that ‘parts of the wider anti-terror framework could be criticised, on the government’s own terms, as reproducing forms of anti-Muslim hostility’.

As they put it, ministers have been ‘hoisted by [their] own petard’. There is also the all-party parliamentary group on British Muslims, which devised the original Islamophobia definition, demanding ‘appropriate limits to free speech’ about Muslims. It is, it turns out, pretty pleased with the government’s alleged compromise. As the group put it: We welcome the government’s announcement…the term ‘Islamophobia’ will no doubt continue to be used alongside ‘anti-Muslim hostility’… we urge the government to now take steps to ensure the adoption of this definition by public institutions and in wider society.

The statement was also retweeted by Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, another utterly reliable barometer of wrongness (she has, for instance, dismissed the term ‘Islamist’ as a ‘fig-leaf…used by Islamophobes’.) Within minutes of the definition being unveiled, the independent pro-Gaza MP Iqbal Mohamed was demanding it be used to control speech in parliament. He also brushed aside the distinction ministers are trying to make between a definition of anti-Muslim hostility and a definition of Islamophobia. ‘We now finally have a definition of Islamophobia,’ he reposted.

As the wife of a previous Labour leader once said, all the wrong people are cheering. Andrew Gilligan is an award-winning journalist and former No.10 advisor.