“Every speaker at the event condemned prejudice, harassment and discrimination against the Muslim community. But we also expressed concern that parliament’s sweeping definition of Islamophobia could be used to inhibit free speech and undermine legitimate criticisms of Islam, including criticisms of Islamic sexism and homophobia.”
Indeed. “Islamophobia” is a propaganda term that is used for two unrelated phenomena: vigilante attacks against innocent Muslims, which are never justified, and honest analysis of the motivating ideology behind jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women and others. The goal of this conflation is to inhibit such analysis and intimidate people into thinking it’s wrong to oppose jihad terror. And it’s working great.
“NUS head pulls out of Tory conference over ‘disturbing Islamophobia,'” by Sally Weale, Guardian, September 30, 2019:
The leader of the National Union of Students has pulled out of engagements at the Conservative party conference in protest at what she said was “deeply disturbing, downright Islamophobia” at a fringe event on Sunday.
The NUS president, Zamzam Ibrahim, had been due to speak at two sessions at the conference, in Manchester, this week but withdrew, claiming she could not participate in a conference that “denies the bigotry faced by Muslims on a daily basis”.
Ibrahim was responding to reports of an event called Challenging “Islamophobia”, hosted by the Policy Exchange thinktank and chaired by the writer and broadcaster Trevor Phillips. Also on the panel were the human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, the Tory MP Nusrat Ghani and the Muslim doctor and commentator Dr Qanta Ahmed.
The student leader did not attend herself, but journalists tweeting about the event reported that much of the debate focused on challenging the definition and use of the word Islamophobia, rather than the issue of Islamophobia itself.
Ibrahim also took exception to an exchange in which Phillips said he thought he was the only person present to have been nominated as “Islamophobe of the Year”, to which Peter Tatchell responded: “I’m jealous.” Tatchell later said he was making an “ironic joke”.
The former Conservative party chair Lady Warsi echoed the NUS leader’s dismay at the event, saying on Twitter that she felt “sick to my stomach to see the party I chaired sink to such depths”….
Tatchell said nobody had denied the existence of anti-Muslim bigotry. “Every speaker at the event condemned prejudice, harassment and discrimination against the Muslim community.
“But we also expressed concern that parliament’s sweeping definition of Islamophobia could be used to inhibit free speech and undermine legitimate criticisms of Islam, including criticisms of Islamic sexism and homophobia.”
Phillips said the reporting of the event was unrepresentative of what was actually said. “The idea that offends me is that what is being said here is that anybody who does not have the mark of approval of Baroness Warsi and others can’t have anything to say about the position of British Muslims and I think that’s wrong.”