Why is it that the UK government can’t define Islamophobia?

In February, the United Kingdom authorities appointed a moving radical to supply a explanation of “anti-Muslim hatred/Islamophobia”, which should person completed its enactment by the extremity of August. In the summer, Conservative MP Nick Timothy and a phalanx of like-minded groups waged a run against immoderate specified definition, which they argued would stymie escaped code for those who privation to criticise Islam.

Since then, the authorities has been cowed into soundlessness and delay. Last week, the BBC published a study suggesting that the explanation volition not usage the connection Islamophobia astatine all, opting alternatively for “anti-Muslim hostility”.

This is simply a mistake; hatred of Islam lies astatine the precise bosom of racism towards Muslims. And portion the British authorities fails to adjacent sanction Islamophobia, Muslims look an unprecedented level of danger. The unwillingness of the British authorities to sanction and face Islamophobia is simply a scandal, 1 that is hardly noticed by mainstream media.

Before the October 7, 2023 onslaught connected Israel, the fig of reported attacks connected Muslims successful England and Wales was already precocious and stood astatine 3,432. In the twelvemonth up to March 2024, it went up by 13 percent, and a further 19 percent by March 2025. These astir caller figures exclude London, owed to changes successful transgression signaling by the Metropolitan Police, truthful the summation is astir apt higher.

According to the astir caller data, without London, 24 percent of spiritual hatred crimes targeted Jews, and 44 percent were committed against Muslims. In addition, Muslims are consistently much apt to beryllium victims of assault, stalking and harassment.

It is somewhat miraculous that Islamophobic attacks successful the UK implicit the past 2 years person not resulted successful anyone being killed. Mob unit successful the summertime of 2024, which followed the execution of 3 girls successful Southport by a non-Muslim attacker, was marked by the targeting of mosques from the start. This year, determination person been aggregate attacks connected mosques, including arson. In December, constabulary successful Northern Ireland arrested respective members of the alleged “Irish Defence Army” implicit a crippled to onslaught a mosque and migrant lodging successful Galway, the Republic of Ireland.

In the look of the emergence successful hatred crime, the UK authorities doggedly campaigns against anti-Semitism – arsenic it should – but is not investing anyplace adjacent to the aforesaid governmental superior successful protecting Muslims. The state’s attack to defining some forms of racism marque this unevenness precise clear.

In December 2016, the UK adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s explanation of anti-Semitism, which is highly arguable owed to its conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. By contrast, the UK authorities has dragged its feet connected adopting immoderate explanation of Islamophobia.

The draught explanation that the BBC published connected December 15, which does not notation Islamophobia, is profoundly inadequate, and so unsafe due to the fact that it gives a blank cheque to those who privation to onslaught Islam. This deficiency of extortion was inevitable. In the moving group’s presumption of reference, the authorities insisted connected “the unchanging close of British citizens … to criticise, explicit dislike of, oregon insult religions and/or the beliefs and practices of adherents”.

Imagine, for a moment, that the authorities specified that a explanation of anti-Semitism should let radical to insult Judaism. Even a cursory humanities knowing of anti-Semitism intelligibly shows that hostility to Jews and Judaism person been inseparable crossed millennia: From the medieval Blood Libel, which accused Jews of sidesplitting Christian children for ritual purposes, to today’s “replacement theory” that Jews are orchestrating the corruption of the alleged “white race”.

Similarly, Western persecution of Muslims has been intrinsically connected with, and driven by, absorption to Islam, from medieval times until the present. Whether during the Reformation of the 16th period successful Europe oregon the colonialisation of North Africa and Asia successful the 19th century, Western thinkers and governmental leaders commonly saw Islam arsenic an inherently imperialist and convulsive religion, dedicated to satellite domination, either done beatified warfare oregon conspiratorial methods.

In the 16th century, German theologian Martin Luther labelled some Jews and Muslims arsenic “fanatics”, that is to say, religion-inspired convulsive revolutionaries. In the 18th century, the French student Alexandre Deleyre wrote that erstwhile “government is perfectly founded upon religion, arsenic among the Muslims; past fanaticism directs itself chiefly outwards, and makes this radical an force of humanity”.

The leaders of the French and British empires were obsessed with the conception that Islam bred an inherent imaginable for revolutionary violence, which had to beryllium guarded against done surveillance, censorship, and a authorities of “moderation”.

The persisting power of this conception of Islam arsenic a root of convulsive conspiracy is easy traced done the 20th and 21st centuries successful the West, astir evidently since the commencement of the “war connected terror” successful the aboriginal 2000s. These ideas chopped crossed the governmental spectrum and beryllium astatine the centre of the UK’s migration panics since 2015, erstwhile warfare and the emergence of ISIL (ISIS) prompted an exodus of refugees from the Middle East.

The hatred of Islam, based connected centuries of Western thought astir that religion arsenic an existential menace to Christian civilisation, is the basal of a panoply of Islamophobic ideas: That Muslims are each imaginable terrorists, oppressors of women, enactment predators, and obsessive theocrats.

In this context, to assertion that Islam is not a people of Muslim-hating vitriol really facilitates racism. It gives carte blanche to those who onslaught Islam with a searing passionateness – a hostility that fuels to verbal and carnal unit against Muslims. To observe specified attacks arsenic the look of “free speech” is to glorify hatred.

The views expressed successful this nonfiction are the author’s ain and bash not needfully bespeak Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.