Definition of Islamophobia

Anna Soubry Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mahmood]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for raising that issue, but that is above my pay grade and I have no particular knowledge about that.

The point I want to make is about inter-community discrimination. My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah) is aware of the constituent who murdered a person from the Ahmadi community. We should really reflect on that. [Interruption.] I ask the shadow Minister to listen. I am coming to that, so please carry on listening. When we discuss Islamophobia, we also have to consider inter-community Islamophobia. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) will understand, a huge amount of knife crime is predominantly between Muslim communities, whether Turkish, Pakistani or north African. The other key issue we have to look at is class discrimination. If we are to address the issue holistically and move forward, all these factors are important.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) and the right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) for giving their best endeavours and having the best intentions in working on the report. I take issue not with the great work they have done and their genuine interest—I commend them for the time they spent on the report—but the issues of Islamophobia are not defined in the report. We must look at that seriously, because it needs addressing properly. I will come to that in my conclusions.

The report says that the Prevent policy, followed for a long time by both Labour and Conservative Governments, is Islamophobic. I believe strongly that Prevent must be amended, but that does not mean that it should not be followed. There should be a better interaction through Prevent with mainstream communities, with its work not limited to small organisations. However, the work done in education has been quite good and positive.

People have made exaggerations. A so-called terrorist house was taken up by MEND, but that was a completely different issue. Social services, a school and the police worked together, understood the issue quickly and dealt with it. However, people wanted to expand on it and highlight it further in the media because that suited their cause.

Chapter 3 of the report looks at a particular case. One person said:

“I was stopped at Heathrow airport. The policeman said that they targeted me because of my attire. This has happened to me so many times. I cannot report it because the police do not see this as Islamophobic”.

That goes to the crux of the definition of Muslimness in the report, which is the key issue for us to address. Muslimness is not just about the attire someone wears. I have a very good friend who is a civil engineer and one of the most observant people of his religion I know. He does not walk around wearing a particular turban. He still works as an engineer, although a lot less than he used to because I think he wants to take it easier. He is a devout Muslim, but he cannot be identified through his attire. If the report is to go the way it seems to be, how can we protect those Muslims who dress normally in society but have in their heart those religious beliefs?

I know someone else in Birmingham who has her hair cropped and blonde. She wears western clothes—sometimes skirts and sometimes trousers. Recently she has come back from supporting a charity in Sindh to look after the poor, open their fasts and do those sorts of things. She does not qualify under the Muslimness description, yet she does more for the Muslim community—

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Change UK)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Mahmood]

No. I must make tracks as time is limited.

This person went out there, but some people would look at her and probably not think that she is a Muslim. People can hide these things.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Mahmood]

I will quickly give way to the right hon. Member for Broxtowe, if she wishes, just to be fair.

[Anna Soubry]

indicated dissent.

[Mr Mahmood]

That is fair enough.

Those are the issues. I am happy to an extent to see people getting frustrated, because our objective is to get a clear definition. That is what I was after, but that is not coming.

Chapter 4 of the report mentions Trojan horse, with which I am familiar. However, the way it is described in the report has no basis in the events on the ground. I was there. I confronted most of those people. I know how girls were made to sit at the back of the school because they were female, how they were all told to cover their heads and how they were supposed to move on. Two reports were done about that by Peter Clarke and Ian Kershaw. This report ignores all that work. It is therefore absurd to say that this report does something positive.

The report talks about

“Denying Muslim populations the right to self-determination”

in Kashmir. The report also mentions Palestine, but I will concentrate on Kashmir because I am a Kashmiri. There is a considerable proportion of Pandits in Kashmir; it is not just a Muslim state. If such claims are to be made in a major report, please get the facts right. Kashmiris are not all Muslims; there are also Pandits, who have long-standing heritage. In fact, the region of Kashmir was created by a Pandit. People who produce these reports must be mindful of such things.

We need balance in this issue, with we as Muslims able to condemn both sides. When radical action, radicalisation and terrorism take place, we should condemn that, just as we should condemn attacks from the right. We should all do that. This is about the mainstream in the United Kingdom and supporting the mainstream of the community. We as Muslims, given our population and the roles we play in this place, the other place and across the country, should do that, and be proud of who we are. We are proud Muslims, and we should start to move away from a victim mentality and be positive about who we are.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Change UK)]

It is a great honour to follow the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown). I agree with everything that she, every other Opposition speaker and the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) have said.

I hope that the Secretary of State has listened to all the speeches made in support of the definition and that he will take away from them the following. The fact is that if the Conservative party is to understand why proportionately more people from black and ethnic minority communities voted for Trump in America than voted Conservative in 2017, it has to examine the reaction to this report and read in Hansard the speech of the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), who I am sorry is no longer in his place. On his basis, the report has been dismissed for no other reason than that the chairs of the APPG are white liberals. Well, I am proud to be called a white, small “l” liberal, and I am even more proud to have helped form this report. I played a very small part in it. The hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) played a considerable part in bringing it all together, and I am sure he will agree that the report was driven by Baroness Warsi, a member and former chair of the Conservative party. Those are interesting and valid points.

I speak as a former barrister. As a barrister, I was taught to look at the evidence. I am not a Muslim and, as it happens, there are very few Muslims in my constituency. The hon. Member for Ilford North is not a Muslim either. He has told us about his own faith, and I have no faith. The fact is that we have absolutely no stake in any of this. We are not from that community, but we are open-hearted and open-minded, and I hope that others will think that that has contributed to what we have done.

We listened. This report, which I am so proud of—it is one of the things I am most proud of in my nine years in this place—is based on the evidence of British Muslims. Unfortunately, too many of them live every day with prejudice, intolerance and Islamophobia. That is their lives. It is what defines them and that cannot be right—it is wrong. We have to stop talking about it and start acting and we begin that action to eradicate Islamophobia, which is rising in our society, by defining it. That is the right thing to do, even though on a previous occasion, as the hon. Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah) reminded us, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), said that the Government’s view was that we did not need a definition. I am pleased that the Government now accept that we need a definition. I say to the Secretary of State that it is here, in this report.

We went into this with absolutely no fixed views whatsoever—none at all. Month after month, we took evidence from individual Muslims and community groups that represent real British Muslims with real-life experiences. We also broadened the process out to politicians. For example, the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) was one of our best witnesses. He is not a Muslim but he talked about his experiences as a Member of Parliament. The issue has been close to his heart for many years. We also spoke to academics.

We gathered the evidence and then we sat down and tried to work out a definition. I was in the Conservative party at the time and wrote in an email, “Islamophobia is racism”. It is racist—that is its root. That is what it is about. I think there was a universal sense of shock among the group that I had come to that conclusion. Obviously, the hon. Member for Ilford North came to the same conclusion. When we look at the evidence and understand where academic thought has got to, we see that of course Islamophobia is rooted in racism and it is racism.

We then had a discussion, which the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield began to discuss. It was one of the best debates in a group that I have ever attended. I am so sorry he is not in his place, but he would agree that he was cynical about saying that this was rooted in racism—and rightly so because many people would be. But he sat and listened and we had this rigorous, brilliant debate with young Muslim academics, older Muslim academics, other academics and many others who have studied this, and he was convinced. I gently say to the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings that it is extraordinary for him to criticise this report, which I doubt he has read, based on a breakfast and then another report, which the hon. Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah) and others have so rightly utterly demolished. Read this report and understand why we have come to these conclusions.

If I wanted to know about racism, I would be more likely to listen to the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy); given that he is a black British man, I think he might know a little more about racism than the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings. If I want to know about race and what racism is, I am again going to turn to the right hon. Member for Tottenham because he clearly knows a darn sight more about it, not because of the colour of his skin, but because he has actually done some research and has listened to the academics and many others. He understands, among other things, the root of the word “racism”, as the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield does. It is a fascinating lesson in history to understand how “racism” emerged as a word, what it meant and how it has developed, not just over decades, but over centuries.

[Naz Shah]

rose—

[Anna Soubry]

I will give way in a moment. The hon. Member for Ilford North rightly explained that the definition of racism—or the definition of race—is no longer about biology; it is about a social concept. It can be defined by that antagonism, but it is also now, in the modern world, about groups that share the same culture, the same history, the same language—it can even include social classes. It has moved on in its definition and it clearly embraces Muslims. I will quickly give way now, if I am allowed, Madam Deputy Speaker. [Interruption.] It seems the hon. Lady has changed her mind on intervening; no problem with that. So it is right, when we define Islamophobia in the way that we do, to say that it is a form of racism and it is rooted in racism.

The other point I wish to make is about phobia and why we describe Islamophobia in that way. Phobia is an irrational dislike and has many forms. It can be a dislike. It can also encompass fear and hatred. I mention one of the things our definition absolutely does and understands. Many others make the mistake of thinking that this growing problem in our society—this bigotry and prejudice that ranges from the everyday insults and offensive language aimed at individual Muslims right through to terrorist murders—is anti-Muslim hatred. The computer that churns out a higher insurance premium for somebody simply because they have Mohammed in their name does not hate Muslims. Indeed, the person who put the information in to churn out that nonsense probably does not hate Muslims either. So we must not fall into the trap of saying that it is anti-Muslim hatred.

This is a cracking report. It is based on evidence from the people who know and understand this. It has been accepted by dozens of their communities and by every political party, apart from the Conservative party. If it is good enough for Ruth Davidson, it is good enough for our Prime Minister.