The BBC has made much of a report from Demos warning that thousands of 'Islamophobic' tweets are sent in English every day. But the researchers, like everybody else who uses the term, have totally failed to define what 'Islamophobia' actually means.
The research by Demos into 'Islamophobia' was reported by the BBC under the headline "Islamophobic tweets 'peaked in July'". From reading the BBC report you might imagine that 7,000 bigoted and anti-Muslim tweets were sent every day in July.
In fact, Demos have inadvertently set out what has been warned of for many years; that 'Islamophobia' is a nonsense word with sinister implications.
On reading the report it is clear that the Demos research isn't just focused on anti-Muslim tweets, or bigotry against Muslims, but, as they define it in their research paper, "anti-Islamic ideas".
In their report Demos selects some tweets it included in the study, which they presumably think are good examples of their methodology in action. A tweet stating "Morocco deletes a whole section of the Koran from school curriculum as it's full of jihad incitement and violence The Religion of peace" is treated the same way as a tweet saying "I fucking hate pakis" in their methodology. [National Secular Society] Read more
