What have been called Muslim child rape grooming gangs, and jihadists may be shielded from scrutiny in the public sphere in Britain if the left-wing Labour Party government criminalises so-called “Islamophobia”, a leading Conservative MP warned.
Following the resignation of Deputy PM Angela Rayner earlier this month over a property tax scandal, the task of overseeing the Labour Party’s working group to establish a definition for Islamophobia to institute into law has fallen to Rayner’s replacement as housing and communities secretary, Steve Reed MP.
In 2021, while serving as shadow local government secretary, Reed urged Labour-run councils to adopt the definition of Islamophobia laid out by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims. The definition, which was later adopted by the party as a whole, branded discussions identifying Pakistani Muslims as the chief perpetrators of the child rape grooming gang atrocities as “racist” and an example of Islamophobia.
This conclusion came despite numerous reports finding that the mass sexual exploitation of mostly young white working-class girls was consistently overlooked by police and local officials for fear of appearing racist.
The prospect of formalising the concept of Islamophobia — a term invented by the radical Muslim Brotherhood — into law has sparked warnings that it may further disincentivise police from preventing further grooming gang abuses or even from stopping potential jihadists from committing terror in Britain lest they face accusations of acting out Islamophobic intentions.
Director of the Free Speech Union, Lord Toby Young, told the Daily Mail: “I don’t think it’s at all fanciful to think that if the Government rolls out an official, state-approved definition of Islamophobia, it will make the police and the security services more hesitant about investigating Muslims suspected of criminal offences. It will further entrench two-tierism in the criminal justice system.”
Conservative MP and shadow equalities minister, Claire Coutinho, accused the Labour Party of attempting to provide red meat to its Muslim voter base, which has been shifting away from the leftist party to independent candidates running on explicitly pro-Gaza platforms in recent years.
“In reality, Labour is not seeking to change criminal law. Instead, this is a misguided attempt to stave off the electoral threat that The Muslim Vote candidates pose to Labour seats. If we learn anything from the horrific mistakes made over the grooming gangs and dangerous gender ideology it must be this: we cannot put some groups in society on a pedestal, free from legitimate challenge. Labour must scrap this definition now,” Coutinho wrote in The Times of London.
The Tory MP argued that introducing a government definition of Islamophobia would only “intensify the culture of censorship that allowed the grooming gangs to carry out their crimes with impunity” and would “shut down difficult but necessary conversations about grooming gangs, gender equality, and even Islamist extremism.”
Coutinho also noted that some of the Labour-run councils which adopted the controversial APPG definition of Islamophobia after the urging of Reed in 2021, included the grooming gang hot spots Telford & Wrekin, Ipswich, Kirklees, and Wakefield.
She warned: “It is not clear whether Labour’s Islamophobia definition hindered action — but surely any government would want to know before the same mistakes are repeated.”
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