🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇬🇧Kezza Yar🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

Islamophobia Awareness Month? Let's Be Aware of What That Word Is For By Dan | Restore Britain November is apparently Islamophobia Awareness Month. So let's be aware, shall we? Let's be aware of what that word has been used to do. A phobia is an irrational fear. Yet it is not irrational to look at a set of religious ideas and criticise them, any more than it's irrational to criticise Christianity, Marxism or the Conservative Party. In a free country, ideas don't have rights. People do. "Islamophobia" deliberately blurs that line, so that questioning a belief is treated as hatred of the believer, and common sense is presented as a mental illness. We've seen where that leads. For years, girls in Rotherham, Rochdale, Telford and Oldham were abused by grooming gangs while officials looked the other way, afraid of being called racist or Islamophobic. A teacher in Batley went into hiding after showing a cartoon in a lesson. Jewish communities, and gay people in parts of Europe, say they no longer feel safe because of Islamist intimidation. Each time, the fear of a word mattered more than the safety of real people. Now the government wants an official definition of "anti-Muslim hostility". However carefully it's worded, any definition that drifts from protecting people into protecting a religion from criticism is a blasphemy law by the back door. Britain abolished its blasphemy laws in 2008. We should not bring them back for one faith alone. None of this is about ordinary Muslims getting on with their lives, working, raising families and obeying the law. Attacks on anyone for their faith are wrong and should be punished. But Islamist ideology, with its contempt for free speech, its treatment of women, its hostility to gay people and its antisemitism, is a legitimate target for criticism. It is the biggest terror threat this country faces, according to our own security services. So here's my awareness campaign. Let's be aware of how free speech was won, and how easily it can be lost. Let's be aware that a woman's right to an education, a gay man's right to walk down the street and a Jewish family's right to worship in peace matter more than anyone's hurt feelings. And let's be aware that a society that can't name a problem can't solve it. Criticising ideas isn't a phobia. It's freedom. Keep it. I'm a paying member of Restore Britain, but I write in a personal capacity. These are my own views, not the party's, and I get no money from them.