How can the Tories expect to fight Islamophobia? James Cleverly doesn’t even know what it is!
Grand wizards: On Monday, BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg tweeted that Tories who had an emergency meeting with Theresa May over the weekend had taken to calling themselves “grand wizards” – a term used by the racist Ku Klux Klan. Now James Cleverly has refused to accept a new definition of Islamophobia, using the hard-right claim that ‘Islam isn’t a race’. Clearly the Conservatives have a racism problem.
This was a new low for Mr Not-Very-Cleverly.
In the wake of Labour’s adoption of a definition of Islamophobia, and after 15 Tory Party members were quietly re-admitted to the party despite having been found to have made Islamophobic comments, BBC Politics Live presenter Jo Coburn challenged Tory deputy chairman James Cleverly to explain why his party would not adopt the definition.
In responses, he flew to pieces on live television. See for yourself:
Watch James Cleverly flap furiously when shown the agreed definition of Islamophobia after saying there "isn't one", and then doublies down with the "Islam isn't a race" trope.
Luckily, @LauraPidcockMP is there to put him straight. Silly Tory. pic.twitter.com/Vzc9rKSy16
— EL4C (@EL4JC) March 27, 2019
The Twitterati had a lot of fun with this one. Aaron Bastani tweeted: “The Tories. The party of allusions to the KKK, repeating white supremacist memes and, now, musing that islamophobia doesn’t exist because ‘Islam isn’t a race’.”
And Dan Lewis wrote: “Cleverly stutters around why his party won’t accept the definition of Islamophobia & @LauraPidcockMP explains exactly why. ‘The idea that you cannot accept this is nonsensical but it is symbolic of the racism that is endemic within your party.'”
And has the Conservative Party adopted the new definition of Islamophobia yet?
At the time of writing: No.
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It isn’t a hard right claim that islam isn’t a race it is a religion, in fact the human race is singular not multiple, ethnic origins skin colour and especially religion do not alter that. a phobia is an irrational fear so that also has nothing to do with what bigots call race, islamahobia literally means irrational fear of muslims which by definition you can’t legislate against, maybe if they got a more realistic term it would make sense.
Thank you for showing us a great way to keep digging yourself into a hole.
Meryl’s comment was right on the ball and straight down the line, Mike. I don’t see any hole! You only have to look at the variety of nationalities subscribing actively to Islam in all its forms, including the extreme ISIS/ISIL/IS/Daesh versions. Is Christianophobia (?) racist? Lots of Yanks (in particular) seem to suffer from Atheistophobia as well as Islamophobia (which would make me chary of visiting at least certain parts of the US of A if I were ever to have the possibility of paying a visit).
I refer you to Laura Pidcock’s response to James Cleverly, in the video embedded into my article here: https://wp.me/p4Sru1-bVa
She said: “The consequences of Islamophobia are rooted in racism… There are loads of Sikh people that get [subjected to] Islamophobia because, in people’s minds, they’re very confused about symbols of religions.”
Your comment echoes far-right racism, I’m sorry to say.
It is no accident that these rotten, corrupt bigots liken themselves to the despicable Ku Klux Klan – the racist bigotry in the corrupt Tory Party is so deeply ingrained they cannot hide it.