Islamophobia Archives | MelaniePhillips.com

What will Jewish leaders say about Trevor Phillips?

March 16, 2020March 16, 2020 MelanieBoard of Deputies, Islamophobia, Trevor Phillips

The veteran anti-racist campaigner and former head of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, Trevor Phillips, has found himself accused by his own Labour party of Islamophobia. The case is grotesque. Phillips has done much for British Muslims. And none of the accusations against him meets any reasonable test of bigotry. His allegedly “Islamophobic” comments are for statements over issues such as the Pakistani Muslim grooming gangs, or polling which found that a quarter of Muslims were “sympathetic” to the aims of the terrorists who killed the Charlie Hebdo journalists…

Audio Culture wars

Islamophobia in the moral maze

March 13, 2020 MelanieIslamophobia, Moral Maze, Trevor Phillips

This week on BBC Radio’s Moral Maze we discussed Islamophobia. The anti-racism campaigner and former head of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission Trevor Phillips, whose own inquiry first cemented the use of the word Islamophobia into British public life, has now himself been accused of this thought-crime. On the Maze, we didn’t discuss his particular case so much as the issue of the word itself. Does it actually describe a real prejudice, or is it used to silence legitimate debate about the Islamic world? Does it seek to prevent…

Britain Culture wars USA

Political auto-immune disease among diaspora Jews

December 19, 2019December 20, 2019 Melanieantisemitism, Board of Deputies, Islamophobia, Jewish Chronicle

Why are so many diaspora Jews doing the dirty work of their mortal enemies for them? In the United States, most Jews still support the Democratic Party despite the refusal by some politicians — namely, the four freshmen congresswomen who call themselves “the Squad,” and have made anti-Jewish and anti-Israel remarks — to distance themselves from the Jew-baiting Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. American Jewish leaders are also deeply reluctant to speak out against black or Muslim Jew-hatred, of which there have been some shocking recent examples. Immediately after…

Britain Culture wars

The shocking thinking of Britain’s Jewish community leadership

December 19, 2019December 19, 2019 Melanieantisemitism, Islamophobia, Jewish Chronicle, leadership

My column in last week’s Jewish Chronicle, which you can read here, ignited a firestorm of controversy – most of it abusive, much of it tendentious, and all of it missing the point of or actively misrepresenting what I actually wrote. In the piece I argued that, while attacks on Muslims should be condemned, the specific charge of Islamophobia was designed to silence any criticism of the Islamic world. I further argued that it was terribly wrong to equate antisemitism with Islamophobia, the accusation of which provided cover for Muslim…

Britain Culture wars

Two reasons why so many still don’t grasp the new antisemitism

December 16, 2019 Melanieantisemitism, Islamophobia, Labour party

At last Sunday’s rally against antisemitism in Westminster, more than 3,000 people listened to a range of speakers denounce anti-Jewish bigotry. Beyond that rally, however, reaction among the general public to the hatred in the Labour party directed at Israel and the Jewish people does not seem to reflect its eye-watering scale and viciousness. Leaked evidence collected by the Jewish Labour Movement exposed a virtual tsunami of crazed venom, with statements that Jews were “subhuman” and should “be grateful we don’t make them eat bacon for breakfast every day”, that…

Culture wars

The triple lock of western Jew-hatred

December 6, 2019December 6, 2019 Melanieantisemitism, Ephraim Mirvis, Islamophobia, Labour party

In France, which is experiencing another surge of anti-Jewish attacks, the lower house of parliament has approved a draft resolution that calls hatred of Israel a form of antisemitism. In Britain, after the Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, made an unprecedented intervention into the general election campaign warning that “a new poison” of antisemitism “sanctioned from the top” had “taken root in the Labour Party,” support for Labour actually increased. In four out of five opinion polls taken over the following few days, the party’s rating rose by between two and…

Culture wars Global conflict

Freedom of speech struggles not to die in Islamophobic darkness

October 13, 2019October 13, 2019 MelanieAPPG, France, Islamophobia, Policy Exchange

In December 2018, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims (APPG) published its “Report on the inquiry into a working definition of Islamophobia / anti-Muslim hatred”. This decreed that “Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.” The government’s response was wary. It observed that the MPs’ proposed definition “has not been broadly accepted – unlike the IHRA [International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance] definition of antisemitism before it was adopted by the UK government and other international organisations and governments. This is…

Culture wars Global conflict

The dangerous equation of Islamophobia with antisemitism

June 28, 2019June 28, 2019 Melanieantisemitism, Ilhan Omar, Islamophobia, UN

The Somali-born congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who has made a number of antisemitic remarks, is currently embroiled in controversy over her marriage history. When claims against her of bigamy and immigration fraud first emerged in 2016, Omar accused the journalists involved of “Islamophobia.” Omar has also made a claim being heard more and more: that Muslims are called antisemites only because they are Muslim. In other words, anyone who calls out Muslim antisemitism is Islamophobic. This twisted claim is a way of making Muslim antisemitism unsayable. The claim is being…

Britain Global conflict Israel

A week of Jew-baiting and Israel-bashing in Londonistan

June 21, 2019June 21, 2019 MelanieIntelligence Squared, Islamophobia, Londonistan, Mahathir Mohamad

Sometimes, a chilling reality is illuminated not so much by what someone says but by the laughter that it provokes. At the Cambridge Union debating society on Sunday, asked why he’d made a point of associating Jews with money, the Malaysian prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, replied: “I have some Jewish friends, very good friends. They are not like the other Jews, that’s why they are my friends.” At which a great gust of laughter swept across his audience. They thought this swipe at Jewish people was funny. In London this…

Britain Culture wars

The appalling treatment of Sir Roger Scruton

April 11, 2019April 11, 2019 MelanieHungary, Islamophobia, New Statesman, Roger Scruton

The shocking character assassination and sacking of Sir Roger Scruton is beyond belief. Scruton, Britain’s pre-eminent philosopher, was interviewed by the New Statesman for its current issue. The interviewer, deputy editor George Eaton, tweeted that Scruton’s remarks were “outrageous”. What was outrageous, however, was the use Eaton made of them. For he tweeted about what Scruton had said: “On Hungarian Jews: ‘Anybody who doesn’t think that there’s a Soros empire in Hungary has not observed the facts.’” But in the interview Scruton didn’t mention that Soros was a Jew. He…