Can Dominic Grieve re-define Islamophobia acceptably to everyone? That is what he is being asked to do.

The former Conservative Attorney-General has been asked to lead a review of the definition of Islamophobia as Labour works down the list of promises it made while in Opposition.

This promise was made in 2019, after the Conservatives – in government – rejected a cross-party proposal that was made in 2019, so appointing a Tory to lead this review is a canny move by Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner.

Indeed, in March 2019, Tory minister James Cleverly came badly unstuck during a TV debate, when he failed to justify his government’s rejection of the proposed definition and Laura Pidcock made a fool of him:

Any proposed definition will be non-statutory but will guide the government and others on discrimination against Muslims.

Labour picked up the issue after reported incidents of anti-Muslim hate crime in England and Wales surged to record levels last year. Tell Mama – which tracks Islamophobia – confirmed almost 6,000 reports of anti-Muslim incidents – more than double the number two years ago. Men were targeted more than women for the first time since Tell Mama was founded in 2012.

The BBC’s Politics Live held an in-depth discussion of the issue on Wednesday, February 26:

The issue is a vexed one – certainly for the Conservatives.

Baroness Warsi – who speaks in the clip above – quit the Tory Party in September 2024 after the Conservatives accused her of racist behaviour. She said the case was “due to be conducted in private behind closed doors” and so she “felt it appropriate in the circumstances to resign my whip and look forward to dealing with these issues openly and transparently”. This has not happened yet, to This Writer’s knowledge.

Lee Anderson had his then-Tory membership suspended almost exactly a year ago (February 25, 2024) because he said (Muslim) Mayor of London Sadiq Khan had ceded the streets of London to “Islamists”. His then-fellow Tories had to scramble to make his words seem acceptable.

In March 2020, after a year of searching for alleged anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) squirmed out of investigating more than 300 tangible complaints of Islamophobia in the Conservative Party.

The Muslim Council of Britain had handed over a dossier containing information about 16 Conservative MPs, one MEP, nine election candidates and 183 party members. The allegations included:

• A former councillor calling for “unconditional surrender” by Muslims, who they labelled “brutes who beat, kill and maim young women”;

• A local party association chair who called for Muslims to be banned;

• A member who called for Muslims to be thrown from bridges;

• Another member who called for the forcible sterilisation of Muslims.

The MCB also condemned the Conservative Party’s failure to suspend MP Daniel Kawczynski after he spoke at an event alongside far-right leaders, and for failing to take action on MP Karl McCartney, who shared Islamophobic and anti-Semitic social media content by Tommy Robinson and Katie Hopkins.

Columnist Peter Oborne wrote at the same time:

The problem stretches from the lowest ranks of the Tory party to the very top. There is a massive problem with Islamophobic bigotry among Tory grassroots, where the MCB has provided a list of more than 100 cases.

Party members, councillors and officials have repeatedly made disgusting statements about Muslims, calling for them to leave the country, making provocative insults about the Prophet Muhammad and peddling malicious lies.

This should not come as any surprise to anyone, since poll results published by the anti-racist organisation Hope Not Hate last year showed that more than half of Conservative members thought Islam was “generally a threat to the British way of life”.

I’ve written before about Bob Blackman, the Conservative MP for Harrow East, who shared an anti-Muslim post by Tommy Robinson, the former leader of the English Defence League; hosted the anti-Muslim Tapan Ghosh, the right-wing Hindu nationalist; and shared far-right and Islamophobic content on Facebook.

Anti-Muslim bigotry is not a barrier to promotion. Nadine Dorries, who also shared a tweet by Robinson, is now a health minister. This is no surprise, given that Johnson himself has a long record of making anti-Muslim remarks.

Tellingly, Johnson is surrounded by Islamophobes. Dominic Cummings, his most senior advisor, reportedly had overall responsibility for The Spectator website in 2006, according to Stuart Reid, the magazine’s acting editor at the time, when a controversial cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban was posted on the site.

One of Johnson’s up-and-coming advisors is Chloe Westley. She praised Anne Marie Waters, leader of the anti-Islam party For Britain, as a “hero”, even though Waters has called Islam “evil” and also has links to Robinson.

I could write reams about the Islamophobia surrounding Zac Goldsmith’s London Mayoral election campaign against Sadiq Khan – the canvasser calling Khan “the Muslim”, the leaflets linking “radical” Khan with “extremism”, and so on. Check out this article for just some of it.

And yet Kemi Badenoch, before she became Tory leader, dismissed calls for an investigation into Islamophobia in her party.

Put it all together and there seems to be a clear need for action based on an agreed definition of Islamophobia.

I’m sure we’re all looking forward to Grieves’s conclusions.

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