I’ve been following closely the horrific story of how Labour plans to forbid anyone in the UK from criticising the ideology of Islam. Under Labour’s plans any criticism or questioning of Islam will be illegal and that will likely include even those criticisms drawn from Islamic scripture itself.
This plan is in itself bad enough but as Freddie Attenborough points out in an article on the subject in Spiked Magazine nearly everyone involved in the ‘consultation’ regarding these plans has a vested interest in removing the right of British subjects to criticise, mock or even gently question the tenets of the ideology of Islam.
Mr Attenborough described the group pushing this ‘Islamophobia’ censorship:
Chaired by former Conservative MP and attorney general Dominic Grieve KC, the working group is marked by secrecy and ideological rigidity. Its terms of reference make clear that the advice it gives to ministers will remain private and unpublished – in direct contravention of the government’s own code of conduct. And the group’s members clearly believe ‘Islamophobia’ – that is, the criticism of Islam and related practices – represents a unique threat to British society. It is a recipe for censorship.
There are also serious concerns about the way the group has gone about ‘consulting’ the public. For example, a recent ‘call for evidence’ on Islamophobia was launched without notice, and only came to light after being leaked. Unsurprisingly, the consultation was skewed towards a pre-determined outcome – in this case, a definition mirroring that which the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on British Muslims cooked up in 2018. This defined Islamophobia as ‘rooted in racism and target[ing] expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness’. It isn’t hard to see where the working group is going.
Mr Attenborough is spot on there. The way that this working party has been set up and how it is going about its business looks like set up to get the result that Labour’s Muslim backers want to achieve. If this law is passed it will eviscerate one of the few rights that Britons have to criticise religion, all religion, which is Section 29J of the 1986 Public Order Act. It will create a situation where Islam and only Islam is exempted from the provisions of Section 29J which are:
Nothing in this Part shall be read or given effect in a way which prohibits or restricts discussion, criticism or expressions of antipathy, dislike, ridicule, insult or abuse of particular religions or the beliefs or practices of their adherents, or of any other belief system or the beliefs or practices of its adherents, or proselytising or urging adherents of a different religion or belief system to cease practising their religion or belief system.
It should be clear to even the most dense of Britons that the proposed anti-’Islamophobia’ law is an assault on what little rights to freedom of speech Britons have left. It will be the ultimate in two tier laws as people will still be able to express dislike of Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism and much more but not Islam. Britons will be forbidden from criticising, even mildly and intelligently an Islamic ideology that has been proven to be linked to the vast majority of terrorism and terror plots, the atrocity of the Islamic Rape Gangs along with the Islam-based anti-British, anti-West and anti-Jewish cultures that are growing in Britain’s towns and cities. It will prevent anybody from asking awkward but necessary questions about the nature of Islamic belief or the behaviour of those who manifest that belief. This law will be used to prevent scrutiny from the State, the media and the public of situations where Moslems have misbehaved ranging from the mosques that tolerate and sometimes laud extremists, corruption carried by Moslems for the benefit of Moslems in local authorities and of course the ongoing atrocity of the Islamic Rape Gangs. With this new law any Briton could be silenced by any Moslem for speaking out about such things. It’s also possible that this law could be used to silence and oppress the growing number of ex-Moslems that are out there. These individuals would, in a Britain where this law exists, not only have to fear the violence and oppression of the Islamic communities that they’ve bravely chosen to abandon, but will also fear the full force of the law for any criticisms that they might make of the ideology of Islam.
Labour have by choosing to follow the path they are on with this anti-Islamophobia law nonsense, shown they are not on the side of freedom of speech, freedom of religion or freedom from religion or even on the side of the majority of Britons. Labour are on the side of Islam and very little else it seems.
People need to start making a big big noise about this noisome plan to privilege Islam above all other faiths and philosophical paths. If we don’t then we might wake up in just a few months and find that we who are not Moslem will have no voice at all.
Links
Spiked article on Labour’s Islam friendly censorship law
https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/06/30/labour-wants-to-silence-criticism-of-islam/
Section 29J of the 1986 Public Order Act
Here is the letter I just sent to Bob Blackman my MP re this very issue.
Dear Bob,
With Labour and its increasingly censorious and authoritarian attitude to rationing free speech and mollifying it’s postal vote base in increasingly fractious monoculture constituencies where they rely on a coerced and unverifiable tranche of whipped postal votes to keep their increasingly fragile majorities, would that be anything to do with their creeping blasphemy law, masquerading as preventing that all-embracing “phobia” that is anything but the dictionary definition of a “phobia” ie “irrational”.
Check out this link from the Oxford Union.
https://youtu.be/rnUNsnwQZf4?si=H1dkc_WRBHdZOFIR
By the very broad definitions of that “phobia” could you ask the Home Secretary either in writing or a question in the House, if the learned and respected Professor, whom you will notice, was very carefully choosing his words, in this febrile minefield, would be prosecuted for said “phobia” for telling the truth about or even discussing said religion?
Would the effects of the activism currently stifling debate and imposing the totalitarianism of forced conformity, cancellation and fear of being labelled as “phobic”, created by said sweeping, ill-considered and frankly dangerously naïve “phobia” laws close down any discussion, negotiation and by definition declaring open season on the ability of the police and others to tackle the jihadis and radicalism while denying the same protection to other religions?
We are on a very dangerous and increasingly steep slope, that I predict will make things far worse, while the increasingly selectively enforcing and “flexibly” interpreting, partial police and activist judiciary will make far worse to mollify the unmollifyable to the detriment of us all.
Sadly, I can see this passing, dressed up as a “human rights” issue, using those same “human rights act” get-out clauses, to remove any concept of freedom of speech, the tyranny of said “phobia” used as a weapon against the majority infidels such as you and me.
Check out Al-Hijrah, jihad by immigration procreation and using the infidel’s laws against them to spread the shariah. Al-Hijrah, aided and abetted by useful-idiots and ignoramuses in the misguided belief that their “virtue” will be rewarded in some multi-culti, khumbaya Shangri-la when the evidence worldwide is the polar opposite, every single time.
Regards and in fear
Perhaps I am being overly cynical but:
(1) do you think Bob Blackman will actually get to see your email, or will one of his aids filter it out?
(2) If he does get to see it, do you actually think he cares? (Perhaps he does, I do not know.)
(3) Will you get a reply? and if so, will it be anything more that a boiler-plate one?
(4) Do you imagine that he would ask such a question in any form, or would the “‘phobia fear” prevent such an action? (Again, I do not know, he’s not my MP – my last one was a convicted crook whilst still sitting, which about says it all.)
Bob is a very good MP and has never failed to answer my enquiries and was personally very helpful when I had some problems with the Plods telling lies.
I think that you’ll find that Section 29J of the 1986 Public Order Act has been made effectively irrelevant and nullified by the Plods and activist judiciary’s heavy handed uses of Sections 5 & 6 of the same deliberately vague and ambiguously worded Act to crush, prosecute, cancel and harass anyone who doesn’t buy their infinitely changing narratives.
That Act has been used particularly recently to target particular groups as well as its “flexible” interpretation, to excuse others. “It is the very model of a modern 2-tier generalism”, to paraphrase Gilbert and Sullivan, and deliberately so as are so many of our reassuringly titled but toxic content laws that are the opposite of what it says on the tin. A private company doing this would be prosecuted for misrepresentation and anything that could be thrown at it, but government not only gets a free pass, the opposition does absolutely nothing, because they want the same powers should they get the opportunity.