Fears Labour’s Islamophobia definition could silence women’s rights campaigners - Baroness Falkner

I think we should ensure that our ideas of what is oppressive doesn't remove the agency of Muslim women.

How many Muslim friends do you have?

Try reading the Labour Party’s own website and see how far they’ve already got with this before you dismiss it as ‘manufactured outrage’. I know it’s tempting to believe our government are not giving away significant power to a proportion of the 6% of Muslims in the UK but they are. We just need people to open their eyes and stop pretending it’s nit happening b

Among other criteria, they want to stop us ‘targeting expressions of Muslimness’. (Further text a few posts back).

labour.org.uk/resources/labours-islamophobia-policy/

Why are you separating out Muslim women?

Some Muslim men behave badly towards non Muslim women as well you know. We want to be able to call them out.

Di you think Muslim women deserve the same human rights and protection by the law as all other women? Or not?

The Labour Party have an All Party Parliamentary Group working on this and has adopted the following as part of their definition already:

There is no single agreed definition of Islamophobia, albeit various civic, social, legal and political sources have attempted to define it. One definition is the All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslim’s definition (APPG). The APPG defines Islamophobia as:
“… rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness”.
The Labour Party adopted the APPG definition and its examples in March 2019 as an important statement of principle and solidarity. The NEC reaffirms that position in this Code of Conduct.

This is an extremely broad definition and almost certainly will stop work in preventing forced/child marriage and FGM among other things (FGM is not totally exclusive to Islam but widely and majority practised by some types of Muslims).

We should be very concerned at how much power this small minority already have. Muslims are 6% of the UK population and not all Muslims want the grooming gangs inquiry to be scuppered, laws on first cousin marriage to be scuppered and our freedom of speech to call these things out to be severely curtailed, but a proportion of that 6% do.

So somewhat less than 6% of the population already have significant power over our government.

Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner have already made significant promises to the Muslim community on this.

labour.org.uk/resources/labours-islamophobia-policy/

I think those women should lead the voices around what is acceptable to them, don't you?

Well, I’m asking you.

The problem is that Islamophobia like all hate speech are in the eye of the beholder. We have to look at the situation in the round.
We know transphobia has been used to attack women's rights and any dissent from the TRA orthodoxy.
We also need to look at the behaviour of Islamists who support terrorist groups and take an aggressively oppressive view of women's place in society.
There is no need for special laws. A mosque is attacked prosecute the perpetrators.
A Muslim attacks a man for burning the Quaran prosecute him and sentence him approprately.
This won't help peaceful Muslims but will aid and abet Islamists.

Well spotted.

We cannot have laws that prevent anyone from calling out unacceptable behaviour against women, whether it’s perpetrated by Muslim men or not.

I’m not seeing any Christian leaders calling for ‘Christianophobia’ laws to make it unlawful to call out their bad behaviour, are you?

As with most things, they need to put in the hard yards and attempt to understand the underlying reasons. And that should be a genuine attempt, not one intended to placate or to patronise. But that's hard, and it's easier to legislate it away.

I would also question if hate incidents are increasing, or are they more reported or more acted upon. It's easier to go arrest someone because of a social media post then it is to deal with theft. That's an easy charge and an easy stat.

However, if it is increasing, we need to look at why. Is it actually Islamophobia or is it wider racism or xenophobia? Is it regionalised? Has something sparked this increase, if so, what?

It’s not ‘generalising stereotypical behaviour’ it’s being to be able to call out unacceptable behaviour regardless of who’s doing it.

The definition of Islamophobia adopted by the Labour Party proscribes ‘targeting expressions of Muslimness’.

We know that there are various practices that British society finds abhorrent - forced or child marriage, FGM and first cousin marriage being among them.

We want to be able to criticise those practices even if they are deemed to be ‘expressions of Muslimness’

What do you mean by Islamophobia, OP? Are you talking about Islam or Muslims?

Frankly I don't think fear of falling foul of hate speech laws is what silences criticism, or even in some cases discussion, of Islam. Its not wanting to end up in hiding due to death threats like that teacher in Batley that silences people.

Indeed. And in the real world, giving this one religion special protection is likely to increase actual Islamophobia not reduce it.

Nope.

No one has actually said that though, have they? Although the religion itself and the culture surrounding it are misogynistic so it makes sense that a lot of it's male followers will also be. However the point being made here isn't that ALL Muslim men are misogynists but rather that IF THEY ARE, women should be able to say so without being called Islamaphobic or racist

I meant social justice language (very tired today) same as TRA’s. Same shit imo.

When you have the governments of Muslim countries like Yemen and Egypt telling us that the Muslim Brotherhood are an extreme Islamist group which has been banned in both of those two countries, and warning the U.K. government that consulting with the MB on the question of Islamophobia is dangerous, then I think we should listen, and be concerned at the suggestion that a blasphemy law specifically to protect Islam is even being considered, let alone become law.

And again with the not so subtle use of language… why does it have to be outrage? Why can’t it just be concerns of women based on the prior evidence of previous definitions, the lack of open consultation on changing it, as well as the evidence of the analysis into ‘perceptions of Muslimness’ spoken about in reports on grooming gangs?

There are men in India right now claiming that they ought to have the right to rape their wives because it is an anti-colonialist stance. I think we should be very wary of anything groups trying to use anti-imperialist or anti-colonialist language to try to undermine a secular public space and discourse.

I think it’s also important to bear in mind that the muslim brotherhood are famous for being extremely litigious. The playbook in other countries is to infect charities, schools, NGO’s, democratic institutions etc and basically create the ground for more and more islamic overreach, they are much more insidious than people realise.

If I were the muslim brotherhood I would be rubbing my hands with glee about testing everything I could in court. There is a reason they are banned in many muslim majority countries.

It’ll just be a replay of the TRA’s but with religious nutters instead.