Forty Labour and independent MPs call on Steve Reed to take ‘important step’ of defining anti-Muslim hatred
Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness
Anti-muslim hate is awful but I don’t think it’s “racism”. Although hate attacks on basis of religion in general should be treated as such.
I’m not too keen on the term “islamophobia” - you can’t really describe a dislike of an ideology as a “phobia” (irrational fear). “Muslimophobia” would make more sense. People should be free to criticise a religion without being branded islamophobic or committing a hate crime, provided that criticism doesn’t involve actually harming adherents of that religion.
The key point here seems to be the because Islam is a religion and not a race then it doesn’t get classed as racism, and that matters because certain laws reference racism.
To me, this points to a problem with our laws where we need a crime to be in the right category of motivation to be treated properly. Why is a racially motivated assault any different to a assault motivated for any other reason? Assault is assault and should be dealt with by the same law.
Assault is already a generic crime. But random assaults whilst serious are just a form of crime that hurts the country a bit but not a lot (individuals might get badly hurt, but a low level of assaults is just a nuisance from a societal level).
But hate crime is different, hate crimes beget hate crimes, and even a low level can grow rapidly, and once you have a racial/religious/whatever conflict you’re stuck with that for a few generations, so hate crimes are incredibly dangerous for society, so get stomped on very hard.
That’s the theory anyway.
