BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, Islamophobia
"‘Not since Dr. Guillotine was supposed to have been topped by his own invention has someone been so stitched up by what they've created? It's not absolutely certain that Trevor Phillips first came up with the word Islamophobia, but he certainly popularized it in an influential report calling for government action, long before he became the founding head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
Now it's him of all people that's been accused of Islamophobia by of all organizations, the Labour Party, that's been unhappily mired for years now in allegations of the parallel prejudice of anti semitism. Mr. Phillips has been suspended from the party, to protect his reputation, its General Secretary says. The allegations are complex. Mr. Phillips has publicly worried about the lack of integration of many Muslim communities and their attitudes on issues like women's and gay rights and blasphemy. Legitimate concerns his supporters say. His detractors say free speech is a cloak for generalized stigma and bigotry.
What seems to have brought this to a head is Mr. Phillips’s opposition to the idea put forward by an all party parliamentary group and urged on the government that Islamophobia is a form of racism. Mr. Phillips maintains that Islam is not owned by any ethnic group, and this would blur the line between the unacceptable hatred of people and the legitimate criticism of ideas. The other vexed issue is how Islamophobia should be measured. By how the recipient experiences it? Or how the perpetrator intended it? Islamophobia, how should it be defined? Who should decide what it is, and at what point should the law intervene?'...
‘Criticism of Islam is part and parcel of the history of Islam. When Muhammad peace be on him first introduced Islam, he was criticized, Islam was criticized, not just criticized, he was ridiculed, and it is part of our journey to reply and to respond to those criticisms. And that has to have a place in society. But when we criticize something or someone, it's the context and the language that we use is very, very important. So once one is criticizing Islam, if they use language that demonizes the followers of Islam, then that borders on Islamophobia. In some cases, it will become Islamophobia.’
‘Well, you say demonize the followers. Demonization of people is always bad. But you say that criticism of Islam is necessary. But isn't it the case that Islamophobia is designed to prevent criticism of Islam. I man the point about the phobia bit, it's not accidental, it makes it into something which is totally, totally impermissible in any circumstances.’
‘I hope that Muslims will not use Islamophobia as a means of preventing and stopping criticism of Islam. I think as believers, we ought to be open to being criticized, to being questioned, to be challenged about our beliefs and our actions and how we live our lives. Absolutely, and I would not want us to hide behind the veil of Islamophobia’
‘Right. So do you think that people who say that Sharia law is incompatible with Britain's democracy, it’s bad, it shouldn't be allowed, that it has problems with human rights. Do you think that that criticism is legitimate or Islamophobic?’
‘And people have been able to say that within our free, liberal society-’
‘Do you think it’s legitimate or Islamophobic?’
‘I think there are aspects of Sharia. How they are implemented within Muslim ruled countries would not fit and sit well within our own democratic structures. And there is no room for that. But there are aspects of Sharia which do not infringe on other people's rights and which would fit perfectly well within our democratic pluralist legal system’...
‘You have to look at the context of the individual saying it. The problem in our society today is they take one statement of a person, say who's worked for 30 years in race relations, and then you say, oh, look, he’s Islamophobic. Do you know what that is doing to our society? I can tell you, I've worked for 20... It's damaging our society.’...
‘Are you happy with non Muslims discussing and debating Islam? How comfortable are you with that?’
‘Hi, Tim, it's a really insulting question. So I'm actually not going to honour you with a response to me if I, if I think it's, come on, are you for real? Are you actually asking me if I think non Muslims should be allowed to discuss Islam?’
‘I’m not asking if they should be allowed to. The point I wanted to make is that there are a number of contentious issues within Islam that are debated within Islam and I want to know if non Islamic societies’
‘Entire Islamic departments’
‘Right, exactly, exactly…. So all I'm asking is that there are, there, there are contentious issues within Islam, which-’
‘Does it trouble me that these departments discuss these issues? No, it doesn't. Can we perhaps discuss the fact that 70% of Muslims in the UK according to the HRC, reported they experienced religious based prejudice in the last year’...
‘You've made it very clear that you believe that Muslims are targeted on the basis of their religious identity. Can I just ask you… whether you think that there are any criticisms that are legitimate of Islam, and if so, what they might be?’
‘I, again, I'm not going to dignify that question. What I will say and I'll repeat what I-’
‘It seems to me that you don’t want to answer questions you cannot answer so we can draw our own conclusions. You've come on to answer questions and you're refusing to answer the questions.’...
‘As I said already to your colleague, Tim, I actually really don't care what you want to have to say about Islam. You can say whatever you like, as far as I'm concerned. However, what you cannot do is use, is use your prejudice’
‘Hang on, who are you accusing of prejudice, and on what basis?’...
‘What I have an issue with is as a society we seem unwilling to recognize, despite innumerable studies in this area, that Muslims are the targets of prejudice, that discrimination is happening. And that in fact we need to take action-’
‘Sorry to interrupt you. You have made that point three times now’...
‘Can I ask you about the controversy over what are called the rape grooming gangs, which as you know, are overwhelmingly perpetrated these offenses by men of Pakistani Muslim heritage? Do you think that it is legitimate to draw attention to that fact as a sociologist, that there is a disproportionately high number of a particular group committing a certain type of offense?’
‘As a sociologist, if you felt that those issues were relevant to the crimes at hand, you absolutely should raise them. And so that's why I'm going to raise the fact that just under half, that's 40%, 47% of religious hate crimes offenses were targeted against Muslims last year, which means that actually instead of perhaps discussing, maybe it could bes, might bes, we should discuss the very real bes of the fact that Muslims are being targeted. And perhaps we should question is as a society what role some of the conversations we have play into Islamophobia. When we question-’
‘Okay, okay’
‘You're telling us that these are happening, we are very much feeding Islamophobia. And I'm sorry, but to have a debate over Islamophobia, when that's a very real thing in our society and to just be-’
‘I think, I think you've made that point several times now’...
‘You're using the word Islamophobia. I think you're using it to mean anti muslim bigotry or anti muslim prejudice. But that wasn't the original 1997 Runnymede *something* which was wider’...
‘It seems to me at the core, generally speaking of most anti Muslim rhetoric, is actually not a critique of the prophet or of the Quran. But it's a critique of the way in which Muslims use religion. Therefore, it's a critique of a group of people, and therefore, it's perfectly reasonable to describe that group of critique of a group of people as being racist.’
‘Well, the problem with using the word racist is that the man in the street, the one thing he knows about Muslims correctly is that Muslims are not a race. So now sociologists use the word racism in a different way. And to a sociologist, in principle, you can be racist to people who play chess, but that isn't how the man in the street will understand the word racism.’
I thought sharia in the UK was a paranoid right wing conspiracy theorist myth
So if you criticise Muslim homophobia (a critique of the way in which Muslims use religion), this is racist. And if you criticise the way in which white people use punctuality or meritocracy, it's a critique of a group of people and it's racist, presumably
