MPs' official attempt to legally define ‘Islamophobia’ is deeply flawed.
Sadiq Khan is an Islamophobe. Not just any old Islamophobe, and not just in the woollier parts of the web. According to a group part-funded by the EU called the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), the mayor of London, a practising Muslim, is one of the four ‘politicians and figures of note in the UK who [have] flagrantly displayed the most Islamophobia’ in 2018.
Barack Obama is an Islamophobe. Cathy Newman, the Channel 4 News presenter, is an Islamophobe. So are Louise Casey, who led an inquiry into the Rotherham grooming scandal, Michael Wilshaw, the ex-head of Ofsted, and Maajid Nawaz, the Muslim counter-extremism activist. Over the last few years, all have been shortlisted for the coveted ‘Islamophobe of the Year’ trophy at the IHRC’s annual Islamophobia Awards, a real event with a real gala dinner in a real London hotel ballroom.
.... One of the APPG’s secretariat, Muhbeen Hussain, is from Rotherham, where in 2015 he organised the local Muslim community to boycott the police for their ‘Islamophobic’ behaviour after the child-sex grooming scandal. And the man who jointly coined the proposed definition of Islamophobia?
He is Salman Sayyid, ‘professor of social theory and decolonial thought’ at Leeds. But Professor Sayyid has another gig, too: he works with our very dear friends the Islamic Human Rights Commission. He’s even spoken at the Islamophobia Awards: the year they gave it to Barack Obama. [The Spectator] Read more
