Miliband's Islamophobia: A Shameful & Dangerous Act of Political Opportunism

In what is a squalid and somewhat pathetic attempt to win votes off Muslims in this tight election, Ed Miliband's credibility and integrity has sunk to even further depths as he promises to outlaw Islamophobia:

"We are going to make Islamophobia an aggravated crime. We are going to make sure it is marked on people's records with the police to make sure they root out Islamophobia as a hate crime."

Everything….and I mean absolutely everything is wrong with this idea. I'll pick just my top four reasons why.

1) It's a dystopian example of thought crime; the very epitome of an Orwellian nightmare. Phobia literally means a fear of something. If you have claustrophobia you are afraid of confined spaces. If you have arachnophobia you have a fear of spiders. If you have a fear of Islam you have a fear of its growing socio-political influence in society, and of the way people anxiously pander to it, and of the extent to which its extremities stultify minds, and of the spectre of increased radicalisation that leads to hate speech and sometimes murder and terrorism (all very understandable fears, I'm sure we'd all agree). Of course we should be wholly tolerant and kind towards moderate Muslims, but far from wanting to criminalise this anti-extremist phobia, we should actively encourage it, and come down even harder on those Muslim leaders radicalising young people.

2) It's a contemptible infringement of our civil liberties and our freedom of speech. To outlaw the ability to criticise, mock, ridicule, campaign against and intellectually challenge Islam is to rob us of vital tools for enquiry and progression, and will at the same time create an even greater culture of trepidation whereby people are forever afraid to speak openly for fear of being criminalised.

3) It's ambiguous to the point of being useless. How the heck is this ridiculous legislation even going to be properly enforced anyway? The boundary line between what constitutes the Miliband version of Islamophobia is blurry. Am I an Islamophobe if I write a blog saying that I don't think the Qur'an is anything other than an inept man-made creation? Will I be outside the orbit of the Islamophobia law if I demonstrate outside a Mosque known to be radicalising young Muslims, or if I tell the police about a Muslim grooming operating above a local kebab shop (that's hypothetical by the way - I know of no such place in my city)? In terms of the law, Islamophobia is so ambiguous it is nigh-on impossible that it could be enforced with any consistency or in a way that doesn't stifle our free expression and genuine concerns about the darker elements of Islam. This leads me nicely onto point 4 - perhaps the most frightening prospect of them all.

4) It empowers the very people we actually want to disempower. Even aside from the very serious problem of making people reluctant to speak out against radical Islamist preaching in mosques, extremism in schools and hate speech in public places, the law will only help the despicable child-sex gangs that groom, entrap, rape and exploit young British girls. The majority of these offenders are Muslims of Pakistani origin (recall infamous cases in Doncaster, Rotherham, Manchester, Blackpool, Oldham, Derby, Newcastle, Rochdale, Bradford and Oxford as horrible cases in point). The reason so many of these young girls were subjected to the perverted exploits of the organised Muslim gangs for so long is because numerous agencies and authorities (including the police) were cravenly fearful of being labelled racist or prejudiced if they enforced the law against these perpetrators.

The truth is, this proposed law is highly irresponsible and gravely hazardous, as it comes with the danger of creating a greater freedom for already dangerous Muslims and potentially dangerous Muslims, and also the danger of creating a culture of trepidation and spinelessness for most other UK citizens.

When looking up the number of places (mentioned above) in which Muslim gangs have been responsible for child-sex grooming, I also happened to find this interesting piece of information from the Henry Jackson Society - "British Muslims could have the decisive vote in a quarter of constituencies, analysis shows. In 159 of the 632 seats, the number of Muslims is greater than the margin of victory in 2010. And this is true among almost half the 193 marginal seats."

So as well as the highly irresponsible and gravely dangerous nature of the law, this information about how important the Muslim vote could be gives clear exhibition to how Miliband's agenda-driven, Muslim-pandering proposition is a most shameful example of how this aspiring Prime Minister will put his own party political aspirations ahead of what's good for the country (namely some of society's most vulnerable people) by prostrating himself towards Mecca to further his own political gains.