New guidance on "anti-Muslim hatred" will accelerate the slide towards cultural suicid
Hardly had the UK Communities Secretary, Steve Reed, finished claiming that the new definition of anti-Muslim hostility would safeguard freedom of speech and in no way restrict it than an attempt was made by a Muslim MP to use it to to muzzle Parliament itself.
Iqbal Mohamed, a “Gaza First” MP, claimed that “Islamophobia” had been normalised in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. So, he demanded, “what sanction will apply?” to MPs and peers.
The British parliament is a place where freedom of speech has near sacred status. Its members can speak without fear of being sued for libel, for example, on the grounds that the central institution of democracy should be where the people’s representatives aren’t fettered.
It is grotesque to claim that MPs and peers have indulged in so much anti-Muslim prejudice that it has become normalised. They have merely drawn attention to troubling developments in Britain’s Muslim community, such as the Muslim-dominated rape and grooming gangs or the deeply alarming defamation of Israeli football fans by Birmingham police seemingly doing the bidding of local Muslim leaders.
Just as feared, an attempt was promptly made under the new definition to depict this legitimate and indeed essential discussion as anti-Muslim bigotry.
But instead of slapping down this instantaneous realisation of people’s concerns, Reed dodged the demand to muzzle parliament and agreed instead that it was “right to point to the huge concern that we should all share about the unacceptable level of hostility and abuse directed at Muslims”. Thus a government minister tacitly agreed with the defamatory falsehood directed at MPs and peers.
The definition is the centerpiece of government guidance for behaviour codes to be adopted by public bodies, councils and businesses to combat prejudice, discrimination and hostility towards Muslims. This will be policed by an anti-Muslim prejudice “tsar”.
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Real prejudice against Muslims or anyone else is obviously bad and to be condemned. But Muslims, like other groups, are already protected by existing laws against discrimination and stirring up religious or racial hatred. The only purpose of this new definition is to shut down necessary and legitimate criticism or condemnation of Islam, Muslims or the Islamic world.
Part of the definition of what constitutes anti-Muslim hatred states:
It is also the prejudicial stereotyping of Muslims, or people perceived to be Muslim, including because of their ethnic or racial backgrounds or their appearance, and treating them as a collective group defined by fixed and negative characteristics, with the intention of encouraging hatred against them, irrespective of their actual opinions, beliefs or actions as individuals.
This is dangerously broad. As the Government’s counter-terrorism tsar Jonathan Hall, KC has said, it could make people worried about discussing “uncomfortable” topics around Muslim culture, migration and Islamism.
And Lord Walney, the government’s former anti-extremism tsar, has said extremists could use the definition to “deflect scrutiny from their quest to undermine our values and intimidate fellow Muslims”.
The government itself knows very well how dangerous this definition is. Immediately after setting it out, its guidance states — with the text emboldened for emphasis: :
It must be read alongside the accompanying text set out below, which makes clear that open debate in the public interest is important and must be fully safeguarded. Context must also always be taken into account when interpreting and applying the definition.
In other words, the definition itself is a threat to free speech so grave it has to be followed by a hasty caveat. But no such feeble calls to protect open debate or apply context will mitigate it.
The fact that the government has chosen not to use the term “Islamophobia” has been welcomed by some as a climbdown from the threat to deploy that deeply sinister, catch-all term. Such relief is premature. The term “Islamophobia” was dumped not because of anything bad in the concept. It was dumped purely because “Islamophobia” had become too toxic. Using the bland term “anti-Muslim hatred” neutralises that disquiet while introducing a measure which has the same catch-all characteristic and is just as dangerous to a free society.
In other words, the language has been massaged to spin something dangerous to society as a progressive and necessary measure. It’s dangerous not least because the whole thing is dependent on a highly subjective view of hatred, hostility or prejudice.
The minister, Steve Reed, said:
Over 40 per cent of all reported religious hate crime is directed against Muslims, which is wildly out of proportion to the number of Muslims we have in the country.
It’s not clear where his 40 per cent figure comes from, since the latest government figures, published in October, showed that “hate crimes” targeted at Muslims were up by under one fifth, from 2,690 offences recorded in the 12 months to March 2024 to 3,199 offences in the year ending March 2025.
In any event, some 90 per cent of terrorist suspects on the security service’s books are Muslim, a figure that really is wildly disproportionate to their estimated six per cent segment of the British population.
But since Muslims claim that anything critical of the Islamic world is “hatred”, that 40 per cent figure likely to be itself a wild overstatement of real prejudice against them.
Most British Muslims aren’t extreme and pose no danger to Britain; but a huge minority do. And as in the Islamic world in general, antisemitism among British Muslims is majority and mainstream.
It’s certainly the case that rising public anger over mass immigration and the fact that the authorities bend over backwards not even to call out let alone tackle Muslim misdeeds has provoked increasing violence on the streets directed at the Muslim community.
But it is British Jews whose every school, synagogue and communal gathering has had to be protected for years against attack, including the terrorist attack on a Manchester synagogue which left two worshippers dead. And Muslims are disproportionately involved in those attacks — something it may well become impossible to say under the government’s new definition.
Indeed, the entire premise of that whole exercise is grotesque. British Jews are under siege from a vast increase in anti-Jewish attacks. For two years, Muslim-led mobs have staged demonstrations “for Gaza” chanting for the murder of Jews. Still more Muslim mobs have been marching in support of the genocidal Tehran regime which has sworn to wipe Israel off the map and kill all Jews.
Muslims have attacked Hindus in north-west London and Birmingham, and Sikhs in west London. And yet the government chooses this moment to protect Muslims from hostility. One religion alone is responsible for the overwhelming majority of terrorist attacks in Britain and indeed the world. Yet that is the one religion to which the British government has decided to offer special protection.
The deeper point is that hatred is an indelible part of human nature and cannot be eradicated. In addition, its identification is necessarily highly subjective and therefore always contestable. Moves to eradicate it therefore invariably entail an oppressive and even totalitarian approach.
The comparison with the International Human Rights Association definition of antisemitism is inappropriate. That definition itself is weak and full of holes and has patently done absolutely nothing to halt the tsunami of antisemitism in Britain.
But the real point is that antisemitism cannot be compared with “anti-Muslim” attitudes because it isn’t a mere prejudice or expression of hostility or hatred. It is is a unique pathology casting Jews as a demonic force with sinister powers, and it is fundamentally exterminatory in intent. It is in and of itself a danger to society.
The reason that antisemitism has so appallingly roared out of control in Britain is the absence of political will to deal with it. And the reason for that, in addition to the government’s support for the cause of “Palestine” which has acted as a Trojan horse for Jew-hatred, is that ministers are desperate to placate and appease Muslim extremism — which takes its energy from the psychotic hatred of Jews.
The consequences of official Britain’s genuflection to predatory Islamism are becoming increasingly widespread, egregious and dismaying.
The Royal Mint, of all things, has announced that it has partnered with Islamic Relief UK for Ramadan to donate online sales profits of its gold, sharia-compliant Kaaba bars to the charity.
The Royal Mint Partners with Islamic Relief for Ramadan 2026 with New Go...
Gold bars will also be donated to the charity for auction to support the Sudan Emergency Appeal.
Zakat, one of the five pillars of Islam, requires Muslims to give 2.5 per cent of their wealth to charity. The Royal Mint produces Britain’s coinage. Why on earth is it performing a Muslim religious requirement? And why is it donating to Islamic Relief, a worldwide organisation that has faced accusations of ties to extremism and terror financing?
Bristol city council had the Muslim call to prayer sung out in Arabic at a public council meeting.
Chester-le-Street Church of England primary school in county Durham invited a Muslim speaker to teach pupils how to pray to Allah. The school published photographs of the visit on Facebook that showed the speaker and the children kneeling as if in prayer and a girl trying on a hijab.
The Free Speech Union reported this week that guidance issued to teachers by Labour councils warns that images made by pupils in art lessons could be seen as “idolatrous” under sharia law. The advice also warns that music and dance classes could be contrary to the teachings of Islam.
Teachers have been advised in the guidance titled “Sharing the Journey” that “for some Muslim parents, sensitivities may exist in connection with the teaching of aspects of art, dance, drama, music, physical education, religious education and RSHE.” It goes on to say:
It is very important that the school understands this and is also careful not to ask its students to reproduce images of Jesus, the Prophet Mohammed or other figures considered to be prophets in Islam. Some Muslim pupils may not wish to draw the human figure.
A primary school teacher in London was sacked and nearly banned for life after he stopped Muslim pupils from washing their feet in the school sinks (for pre-prayer ritual) on the grounds that it was unhygienic and against basic rules.
He told his class that Britain was still a Christian country – pointing out the King is head of the Church of England and Islam ws a minority religion here Some children and parents complained that this “upset” them.
Police investigated the teacher for hate crime but dropped it completely. Yet the school and council still fired him for “gross misconduct” after years of service, and even tried to bar him from ever working with children again, which he successfully fought. He’s now suing the local authority with support from the Free Speech Union, arguing he was punished just for stating obvious historical and factual reality while enforcing normal hygiene and school standards.
What’s happening is that Britain has lost the will to uphold and defend its own historic identity as a nation.
Thus the government’s anti-extremism body Prevent includes in its sub-categories of extreme right wing terrorist ideology, along with white ethno-nationalism and white supremacism, “cultural nationalism” which it defines as holding:
‘Western culture’ is under threat from mass migration and a lack of integration by certain ethnic and cultural groups.
Which in effect stigmatises as extreme right wing terrorist sympathisers millions of ordinary people in Britain who are concerned about precisely that because they see Britain’s identity rooted in a common culture being steadily destroyed.
And now we learn that the Bank of England will replace historical figures on its new banknotes by animals and other images from the natural world. This is after a public consultation in which, after reading the Bank’s guidance note that stated:
The theme should not involve imagery that would reasonably be offensive to, or exclude, any groups,
the public overwhelmingly plumped for images from nature. Thus Winston Churchill might be replaced by a badger.
So great is the collapse of British national identity, in a nation whose common culture has been replaced by groups competing for power and whose own history is therefore viewed as “divisive”, that people are now being replaced by wildlife.
In Britain, predatory Islamism is pushing at an open door in a nation that is committing cultural suicide. DM.
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