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

[IwantToRetire]

Labour's Islamophobia definition could be used to silence women’s rights campaigners, the recent head of the equalities watchdog has warned.

Baroness Falkner said the new definition could be weaponised against those who “dare” say that Muslim women are being suppressed.

The new definition – which has not yet been published by Communities Secretary Steve Reed – has been criticised by Tories as a route to a “de facto blasphemy law”.

Criticising the plans, Baroness Falkner told Sky News: “If they’re going to bring in yet another area where, for example, anyone who’s defending women’s rights is going to be accused by those ethnic minority men of Islamophobia, if they dare say something about how Muslim women are suppressed.

“I’m a Muslim woman myself. I know all about this.

“I know the community.”

NB source is the Sun! Link for full article https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/37562911/labour-islamophobia-definition-silence-womens-rights/

Depends on the framing.

Sexpolitation of minors is a global phenomena that certainly isn't exclusive to Muslims. It tends to be more associated in areas where lawlessness occurs…cue Rotherham & Telford with their sub standard policing. The 'lover boy method' that was famously used by Andrew Tate is a universally used con that he claimed was easier to exploit in Romania where rape laws & policing weren't as strong. So attributing to a specific racial/ethnic/religious/cultural group is not only false because it occurs in many non muslim countries but we have no reliable recorded data on its demographic prevalence in the UK. The fact that it appears to be a phenomena in the UK as opposed to other western countries might point to it really being a 'British grooming gang' problem than a muslim one.

That's not to say we shouldn't investigate & discuss thoroughly all the threads that led to the abuse including the backgrounds of the individuals who perpetrated the abuse. For example, If they were immigrants were they thoroughly vetted before they were given residence or why British born police ignored the abuse for misogynistic reasons.

https://x.com/ukhomeoffice/status/1998411916251898241

I’m sorry you’re having difficulty reading my posts and understanding. Please try again.

Well, I'll happily continue to take my line from Anti-FGM organizations who (as best I can tell) universally describe it as a cultural issue and not a religious one, and often warn that conflating it with Islam is both wrong and can be harmful.

On the "Islamophobia" issue more widely, I agree with a PP that there's a lot of manufactured outrage at play. The reason Labour have established a working group to craft a new definition is precisely because the APPG definiton (which they, and other parties, adopted only for internal party purposes) was too broad for adoption into law.

We still don't know what the exact proposal will be but the "drip drip" into the media has seemingly confirmed that the working group has shelved the idea of defining "Islamophobia" and instead has been working on a definition of "anti-Muslim hate", precisely because Islam, and practices associated with it should (of course) remain entirely free to critique.

The definition won't create a new offence, but will assist authorities in determining whether a hate crime has occurred. At the moment, the lack of a specific definition means that critique of Islam could be recorded as a hate crime.

A definition that makes clear that criticism of Islam as a faith - no matter how harsh or controversial - is not hateful, could well lead to a reduction in recorded hate crimes. Pending the definition actually being published, but based on the widespread reporting of the shift from "Islamophobia" to AMH, and the reasons for that shift, a reduction in the types of speech considered possible hate crimes is my expectation.

So if the imam wheels his wife out to say "I'm fine with FGM", you'd accept that? Or would you question whether she was able to speak freely about this?

Feminists are entitled to say that some practices are so wrong that women cannot consent to them, even if they claim to. That most British feminists are white and secular or Christian doesn't make this less true when the practice is one that disproportionately affects Muslim women. "White women, stay in your lane" is a tactic used by soi-disant leftists to enable Black patriarchists and other racial minority men to maintain control over the women in their communities by preventing white women from speaking out on the blatant misogyny found in those communities, examples being FGM and forced marriage. It's a divide-and-conquer tactic and a silencing tactic.

Anyway, back to the topic of the thread , I read this from the Free Speech Union today:

The working group on Islamophobia has been a stitch-up from the start.

Reports six weeks ago suggested the group had quietly submitted its recommendations to ministers — yet the Government still hasn’t published them.

Meanwhile, officials at MHCLG have invited hand-picked organisations to view and discuss the proposed definition.

The Free Speech Union — Britain’s leading free speech advocacy group — has been denied the same access.

The double standards from MHCLG are striking.

Any official definition of Islamophobia or anti-Muslim hatred risks stifling free speech. We cannot let the government revive Britain’s blasphemy laws.

They appear to be working on this behind closed doors. A bit like the trans activists did.

The discussion about FGM seems pretty irrelevant, though.

First, its not an Islamic practice.

Second, even it were an Islamic practice, there's no reason to think that a proposed definition of AMH would limit anyone's ability to criticize any Islamic practice.

In a hypothetical UK where it became illegal to criticize Islamic practices, and that was deemed to include FGM, that would render the Muslim Council of Britain (among others) "Islamophobic".

As they're as much a union as the DPRK (North Korea) is a democray and a very partisan grift, "meh"

@OneGreySeal

‘Muslims are terrorists and violent’ - Islamophobia

‘Muslims are terrorists and violent’ is a claim of fact (that may be true or false depending on context, evidence, etc.).

It might be motivated by hate, or not.

’Men are oppressors and violent’, likewise.

The government should not be wading in to stifle robust expression of either view.

Government measures to restrict speech rarely protect the genuinely marginalised or stigmatised view. They follow politics and fashion.

Yes this is exactly what's going on. They invited certain groups to have an input and refused to say who.
The consultation question were leaked on the internet shortly before the closing date. I completed it but there was no intention of a general consultation. I think they were a bit shocked at the response they received.
It has been handled so badly they obviously don't know what to do.
If they had any sense they'd drop the whole thing but I think they'll plough on regardless.

I thought they may drop it as a survey came out as few months ago linking their adoption of any Islamophobia law with lost votes but they are so arrogant and lacking in any sense they're ploughing on regardless.

Free Speech Union is just a vehicle for Conservative Peer, Toby Young, to try and reframe himself as a righteous figure, rather than a misogynistic, ableist, classcist peice of shit who was stupid enough to think he could be as offensive as he liked without professional consequences.

It’s one of the few unions supporting free speech and women’s rights. Why are you so keen to dismiss them?

1. It's really important to be able to name the perpetrator groups. Talking about "everyone who has been groomed" erases who the groomers are and how they operate. This isn't incompatible with saying "the problem is men", but it does let us recognise the different strategies used by Pakistani men's grooming gangs compared to, say, rich white men's paedo rings in order to counter them effectively.
2. It's really important to be able to name the overlapping groups and supergroups that the FGM victims are part of. Talking about "FGM victims" without any reference to overlapping groups erases our ability to identify women at risk.

To use an example from a different aspect of feminism:

One of the mechanisms used by the trans lobby to stop women from talking about women's issues was by asserting that the people with cervixes were a group, and the people who get pregnant are a group, and the people who suffer misogyny are a group, and we had to talk about these groups in those isolated ways without acknowledging that these groups had total or near-total overlap in their memberships and were in fact all part of a supergroup called "women". This nonsense even made it into prestigious medical journals:

"Furthermore, such an objection is an instance of regulation assuming that people with the physiology to become pregnant are irresponsible users of healthcare."

When you call the people who face excessive regulatory oversight about early medical abortion "people with the physiology to become pregnant", and call the people who get cervical cancer "people with cervixes", and the people who get cat-called when they go running "people who experience street-located sexual harassment", it looks like these are all different groups of people.

Reword that journal quote:

"Furthermore, such an objection is an instance of regulation assuming that women are irresponsible users of healthcare."

Suddenly, it becomes obvious that the overregulation of early medical abortion is part of a pattern of how women are treated as public property instead of as people, that it and the catcalling and the questionable smear-taking practices (e.g. "no wider than that" [ratcheting sound of speculum opening further] "oooowww I said no wider!") are all manifestations of Rule 16.

Likewise, when we can see evidence that Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslim women are disportionately likely to go their ancestral homeland and come back married to a cousin they've never met, and are disproportionately likely to be the victims of "honour" murder committed by male relatives, etc, when we can see that the overlap between the two groups is very high, if we can say so, we can do something. If we are too scared to say anything because we fear falling foul of the law, we end up with Victoria Climbié situations where people are preventably killed or hurt because everyone was too scared to act.

Wow sounds like sour grapes. I reckon he's being pretty successful.

Criticising the plans, Baroness Falkner told Sky News: “If they’re going to bring in yet another area where, for example, anyone who’s defending women’s rights is going to be accused by those ethnic minority men of Islamophobia, if they dare say something about how Muslim women are suppressed.
“I’m a Muslim woman myself. I know all about this.
“I know the community.”

Baroness Falkner makes an excellent about about women’s rights. PPs may argue against us standing up for the human rights of Muslim women and girls but when a Muslim woman issues a warning like this, surely we should listen?

As we’ve seen recently, some of the beliefs that negatively affect Muslim women can also affect the rest of us. Shutting down conversation is not a benefit for women or society.

They aren't a union, they just picked that as part of their company name.

I'm keen to dismiss them because, for all their self-agrandizing and self-promotion, they don't have any real track record to speak of and - again - seem to have been founded because Toby Young was butthurt about (very understandly) losing some roles.

They don't have the track record of established and larger free-speech advocacy groups, like Liberty or Index on Censorship.

They're a new, small, group who - based on the statement you copy-pasted - seem to have an extremely over-inflated sense of their own importance.

Again, I think they exist primarily as an attempt for Toby Young to restore his (rightfully) damaged reputation.

Well as far as I'm concerned Liberty and Index on Censorship have been a dead loss.
FSU is grass roots activism.

Since its founding, the Free Speech Union has fought over 5,100 cases and receives, on average, 75 requests for help every week. In cases that have reached a conclusion, we have been successful in roughly 80 per cent. This year alone, we have taken on almost 2,000 cases.

They’ve had success supporting people legally on free speech issues.

This.

I work with an excommunicated ex-Mormon. Unlike, say, <a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150108025940/www.thewire.com/global/2013/03/al-qaeda-most-wanted-list/62673/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ayaan Hirsi Ali, he's not been put on a hit list by any of his former co-believers.

Sour grapes? Sour re. what, exactly?

Free speech advocacy is vital, and I have a lot of time for those people and groups who have dedicated their career to it.

I am less impressed by those who don't show any interest in defending free speech until their own, ill-advised words bite them on the arse, and who instead of lending support to existing groups, found their own one out of an apparent desire to self-promote.

I am a bit late to this conversation, but surely the only way a society can navigate questions like what degree should religious beliefs that seem to go against what we recognize as individual rights be accomodated or tolerated; or how to navigate the facts that members of special communities often disagree on issues, is to allow robust public discussion of the issues? That includes all the differernt people from differernt groups?

Or in other words, navigating it will require true democratic discourse.

Individuals' freedom of belief and expression is great and important, but we shouldn't forget that the more basic reason for upholding that robustly is that it is a necessary condition to a functioning liberal democracy.

The Labour Party, and the left more generally, is really playing with fire with these attempts to control what kinds of discussions people can have.

What exactly has Index on Censorship done for women? Jodie Ginsberg was good but what exactly has Ruth Anderson achieved. Apparently she's now left.
Like most rights organisations I used to support they have sold out.

I get you don't like Toby Young but so what, he's delivering.

Liberty have no interest in defending free speech. They have an interest in defending only people who parrot the agreed orthodoxy of the omnicause.