‘The Government’s Call for Evidence on Islamophobia is a Rigged Box-Ticking Exercise’

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In an era where British Muslims face rising levels of hostility – from hate crime in the streets to institutional discrimination – one might expect that a Government working group tasked with producing a definition of Islamophobia or ‘anti-Muslim hate,’ might be a good-faith effort. 

Unfortunately, the recent call for evidence by the UK Government’s working group on an Islamophobia/Anti-Muslim Hatred definition has left activists disappointed, and with the impression that it is not a sincere effort.

In fact, the process appears to be little more than a farcical box-ticking exercise, leading to the conclusion that the procedure has been structurally rigged to avoid engagement with the very communities whose rights it claims to serve. 

Firstly, the process for submitting evidence on how to define Islamophobia/Anti-Muslim Hate appears to have been designed to avoid actual engagement. Anyone who has submitted evidence to a standard Parliamentary inquiry knows the word count for consultations tends to be around 3,000 words.

It would have made sense for this process to have been the same, for the obvious reason that Islamophobia is a multi-faceted and nuanced sociological and political problem that requires in-depth analysis. Such work requires evidence drawn from the lived experiences of ordinary Muslims, academic literature, case studies, legal precedent and data analysis. 

However, the amount of evidence that can be submitted to the working group is constrained by tight limits, in some cases disallowing answers that exceed 70 to 100 characters. To put that into perspective, this is barely more than one tweet’s worth of letters.

One cannot even scratch the surface of a problem like Islamophobia, covering legislative gaps, media biases, hate crime trends or workplace discrimination, within such restrictive limits. This does not appear to be an open and sincere invitation to share knowledge; rather, it has the look of a bureaucratic muzzle disguised as a public consultation. 

Excluding the Experts

If the format of the inquiry were the only issue, then perhaps the working group may have been able to retain some legitimacy. Unfortunately, there are much deeper and more disturbing problems, which, arguably, completely undermine its efforts. 

Reports claim that the working group was prohibited by the Government from engaging with grassroots civil rights Muslim bodies like the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB).

MCB and other Muslim bodies, like Muslim Engagement & Development (MEND), are the very organisations that have been working for years, decades even, to combat Islamophobia across the UK  – they are the experts in this field. They have deep ties to, and the trust of, British Muslim communities up and down the country. 

How can the Government expect to be given an accurate understanding of Islamophobia if it is shutting out the very organisations that represent the communities suffering this abuse daily? Again, it would appear that the negation of grassroots, credible Muslim voices has been built into the very structure of this process, with the intention of reaching a predetermined outcome as to how prejudice against Muslims should be defined. 

However, concern around how this has all been managed should turn into consternation and alarm when considering who actually has been consulted. Investigations allege that the Government’s working group has sought advice on how to define Islamophobia/Anti-Muslim Hate from some of the very non-Muslim individuals and organisations who have not only denied Islamophobia in the past, but who themselves have stood accused of promoting Islamophobia. 

Reportedly, Trevor Phillips, who was previously suspended from the Labour Party over allegations of Islamophobia, was asked about the definition. The right-wing ‘think tank’ Policy Exchange – for whom Phillips was a senior fellow – was also consulted, which is truly mind-boggling, considering that they have long been accused of foisting Islamophobic tropes into British public’s understanding about Islam and Muslims. 

The highly esteemed Georgetown University-based Bridge Initiative has noted Policy Exchange’s well-documented and extensive past of making sweeping accusations against Muslim organisations working to combat Islamophobia without offering any evidence.

As one piece published on the Bridge Initiative’s website put it, “Policy Exchange’s anti-Muslim agenda is clear and visible: it exclusively vilifies Muslim organisations, labelling them as ‘Islamist’ and ‘extremist,’ sending a clear signal to the public that they are somehow tied to terrorism. These unsubstantiated accusations are dangerous smears that inevitably sow fear within the Muslim community.”

Policy Exchange’s credibility has also been a topic of dispute for a long time. Previously, the organisation was accused by BBC Newsnight of having fabricated evidence in one of its reports claiming that it had uncovered extremist literature for sale in mosques around the UK. Policy Exchange was later forced to apologise.

The group also reportedly consulted the National Security Society and Humanists UK, leading campaigners who have long criticised attempts to define Islamophobia. They have in the past regurgitated tropes about how the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims’ definition of Islamophobia is a threat to free speech, even though it explicitly sets out how it avoids undercutting free debate around religion. 

An Open Charade

To politely ask those non-Muslims accused of Islamophobia for their input, while actively blocking legitimate grassroots Muslims bodies, reveals the entire Government process of constructing a definition of Islamophobia/Anti-Muslim hatred to be nothing more than a farce. It would be akin to crafting policy around gender-based violence based only on the voices of men. It betrays the very purpose of the exercise, which is to understand and address anti-Muslim bigotry, not to indulge those accused of promoting it.

Unfortunately, the process appears to be compromised at every level. The restrictions around word count appear to be deliberately engineered to undermine the submission of serious evidence.

It has blocked the voices and opinions of victims, while soliciting those of the views of the perpetrators’ allies. It is difficult to imagine how anyone could frame this so-called ‘call for evidence’ as legitimate – the communities it overlooks, the scholars whose work it ignores or the policymakers who will likely inherit the hollow conclusions it produces. 

At a time when the far-right is on the march and incidents of Islamophobia are reaching record levels, Muslim communities need a process around defining Islamophobia that they could trust. Instead, what they have been given is a Government charade which reads like an attempt to pacify those of us who want to genuinely tackle Islamophobia while allowing it to go unchecked.

The Government must strike an urgent U-turn and begin consulting Muslim bodies like MCB which represent hundreds of Muslim community organisations across the country. Only through doing so will it acquire an understanding of what Islamophobia really is, how to define it, and therefore how to uproot it.

To carry on with the current trajectory will only lead to deepening mistrust among Muslim communities toward the government and strengthen their conclusion that, in reality, this is just a sham consultation.