We are told that Islam is so awful that the need to criticise it must be protected as a legal right, and therefore we don’t deserve a definition of Islamophobia, writes Afroze Zaidi. [GETTY]
At the end of February, the Labour government announced that it was launching a group to come up with “a working definition of Anti-Muslim Hatred/Islamophobia”. Some Muslims have welcomed the news; however, as a Muslim who has been researching Islamophobia from a decolonial lens for over a decade, I feel differently about it.
The move appears to be in response to the latest figures on anti-Muslim hate crimes, which were reportedly at the highest recorded level in 2024. According to Tell Mama, one of the reasons for this spike was Muslims advocating for Palestine post-October 7.
It is, of course, entirely on brand for PM Keir Starmer’s government to call attention to hate crimes against Muslims advocating for Palestine with one side of its mouth while endorsing heavy-handed policing and criminalisation of pro-Palestine protesters with the other.
Meanwhile, the response in the right-wing British press has featured the sort of gaslighting to which Muslims in the UK have now become accustomed.
We are told that Islam is so awful that the need to criticise it must be protected as a legal right, and therefore we don’t deserve a definition of Islamophobia. Or we are told that Muslims already have enough legal protection, and a legal definition of Islamophobia would be “special treatment” or tantamount to censorship.
It is essential to consider all of the above in the context that the people making these arguments are often the same people who are arguing in favour of an established definition of antisemitism. It would seem, therefore, that defining antisemitism is both simple and necessary. Defining Islamophobia, meanwhile, is a minefield.
This is a deliberately constructed narrative of desirable versus undesirable victims.
The irony here is that the undesirability of Muslims as victims of hate is, in itself, a symptom of Islamophobia. In other words, the biggest challenge to an officially sanctioned definition of Islamophobia is not, as the dominant narrative among British politicians and media might suggest, freedom of speech or censorship or perceived special treatment.
The biggest challenge to defining Islamophobia, is Islamophobia.
And herein lies the elephant in the room which politicians and even some Muslim organisations have failed to acknowledge. Islamophobia is not limited to hate crime. Moreover, some of the most dangerous forms of Islamophobia operate not at the grassroots but at institutional and structural levels.
Arzu Merali, former Head of Research at the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), commented that:
“There has been decades worth of extensive work undertaken on Islamophobia, its definition and its impact across society – not least by IHRC – looking at spiking hate crime to institutional anti-Muslim racism. Understanding the impact of structural Islamophobia on the everyday experience of Muslims (what IHRC termed ten years ago as the environment of hate) is essential in tackling street level violence and hatred.”
Educators in schools and universities turning into informants against their Muslim students is one of the most pernicious forms of Islamophobia in present-day Britain. Prevent is state-sponsored Islamophobia. The Trojan Hoax was state-sponsored Islamophobia. The Forde Report extensively documented Islamophobia within the Labour party, which Starmer summarily dismissed.
Muslims being discouraged from expressing their Muslimness in schools, workplaces and public spaces is part of the everyday Islamophobia which goes unnoticed and unchecked and which is beyond the scope of any hate crime legislation.
Moreover, while Muslims calling for an end to the genocide in Gaza are at risk of hate crimes, it’s important to remember that this form of Islamophobia is not separate to the Islamophobia that has sustained the genocide in Gaza on a global scale.
Merali added that: “The government’s announcement to go back to the drawing board sounds cynical at best and does not augur well for outcomes.” At this point, there is absolutely no need to reinvent the wheel.
As for freedom of speech concerns, I wrote an entire thesis over a decade ago arguing that hateful views on Islam as a faith, versus those which are simply critical, are fairly easy to distinguish.
To summarise, my research highlighted that because the freedom of speech clause exists for acts of religious hatred but not for racial hatred, this distinction effectively places a greater burden of proof on victims of religious hatred.
The freedom of speech clause creates disparity between access to justice for religious minorities from racially homogenous groups, such as Jews, and racially diverse groups such as Muslims. This is because Jews are protected by racial hatred legislation, while Muslims, as a racially diverse religious group, are not.
Ten years on, I am no longer arguing for amendments to equalities or hate crime legislation. Even with the best intentions, the law is limited in its application and cannot be relied upon for justice in its true sense. The practice of advocating for justice, and carving out a space for ourselves as Muslims, begins and thrives at the community level.
We must set aside our differences and get organised as a community. We already have blueprints from anti-racist, decolonial, and labour rights movements that we can follow.
Collectively, we also desperately need a level of political awareness that allows us to recognise who our allies truly are while giving us the courage to close our doors to Zionist enablers of genocide.
There’s no better time to revive and embody these principles than in the month of Ramadan, when community spirit and the imperative to do right by Allah are at their peak. Doing so might just help us realise that a government-sanctioned definition of Islamophobia won’t save us, but stronger community ties could make all the difference.
Afroze Fatima Zaidi is a writer, editor and journalist. She has a background in academia and writing for online platforms.
Follow her on X: @afrozefz
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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.
