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THE LIMITS OF LIBERAL INCLUSIVITY: HOW DEFINING ISLAMOPHOBIA NORMALIZES ANTI-MUSLIM RACISM

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2020

Rebecca Ruth Gould Open the ORCID record for Rebecca Ruth Gould [Opens in a new window]
Rebecca Ruth Gould*
Affiliation:
Professor, Islamic World and Comparative Literature, University of Birmingham
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Abstract

Responding to recent calls made within the UK Parliament for a government-backed definition of Islamophobia, this article considers the unanticipated consequences of such proposals. I argue that, considered in the context of related efforts to regulate hate speech, the formulation and implementation of a government-sponsored definition will generate unforeseen harms for the Muslim community. To the extent that such a definition will fail to address the government's role in propagating Islamophobia through ill-considered legislation that conflates Islamist discourse with hate speech, the concept of a government-backed definition of Islamophobia appears hypocritical and untenable. Alongside opposing government attempts to define Islamophobia (and Islam), I argue that advocacy efforts should instead focus on disambiguating government counterterrorism initiatives from the government management of controversies within Islam. Instead of repeating the mistakes of the governmental adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)'s definition of antisemitism by promoting a new definition of Islamophobia, we ought to learn from the errors that were made. We should resist the gratuitous securitization of Muslim communities, rather than use such definitions to normalize compliance with the surveillance state.

Keywords

IslamophobiaIslamBritish Muslimshate speechfree speechregulationracismterrorismideologypolitics of language
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Law and Religion , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , August 2020 , pp. 250 - 269
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University

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References

1 All-Party Group on British Muslims (@APPGBritMuslims), Twitter, April 23, 2018, 12:29 p.m., https://twitter.com/APPGBritMuslims/status/988454757084909568. The call was circulated only via Twitter; it was not disseminated elsewhere, either online or in print.

2 All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims [hereafter APPG on British Muslims], Islamophobia Defined: Reporting on the Inquiry into a Working Definition of Islamophobia, 2018, 1–72, 27, https://static1.squarespace.com/static/599c3d2febbd1a90cffdd8a9/t/5bfd1ea3352f531a6170ceee/1543315109493/Islamophobia+Defined.pdf.

3 The APPG on British Muslims’ definition of Islamophobia was adopted by the UK Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats in March 2019. See Frances Perraudin, “Labour Formally Adopts Definition of Islamophobia,” Guardian, March 20, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/mar/20/labour-formally-adopts-definition-islamophobia.

4 Khaled A. Beydoun, “Islamophobia: Toward a Legal Definition and Framework,” Columbia Law Review Online 116 (2016): 108–25, at 111, https://columbialawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/November-2016-11-Beydoun.pdf.

5 Chris Allen, Islamophobia (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 190.

6 APPG on British Muslims, Islamophobia Defined, 11.

7 Massoumi, Narzanin, Mills, Tom, and Miller, David, “Islamophobia, Social Movements and the State: For a Movement-Centred Approach,” in What is Islamophobia? Racism, Social Movements and the State, ed. Massoumi, Narzanin, Mills, Tom, and Miller, David (London: Pluto Press, 2017), 3–32, at 8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Sayyid, Salman, “Out of the Devil's Dictionary,” in Thinking through Islamophobia: Global Perspectives, ed. Sayyid, Salman and Vakil, Abdool Karim (London: Hurst & Company, 2010), 5–18Google Scholar, at 15.

9 This aspect further develops arguments first articulated in Gould, Rebecca Ruth, “Is the ‘Hate’ in Hate Speech the ‘Hate’ in Hate Crime? Waldron and Dworkin on Political Legitimacy,” Jurisprudence 10, no. 2 (2019): 171–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Anshuman Mondal's documentation of the uneven attention given by government to antisemitic as compared to Islamophobic speech sheds light on some of these issues. See Mondal, Anshuman A., “The Shape of Free Speech: Rethinking Liberal Free Speech Theory,” Continuum 32, no. 4 (2018): 503–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Rebecca Ruth Gould, “Legal Form and Legal Legitimacy: The IHRA Definition of Antisemitism as a Case Study in Censored Speech,” Law, Culture and the Humanities, published ahead of print, August 18, 2018, https://doi.org/10.1177/1743872118780660; Rebecca Ruth Gould, “The IHRA Definition of Palestinians: Defining Antisemitism by Erasing Palestinians,” Political Quarterly, published ahead of print, July 28, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-923X.12883.

12 “If We Want to Stop Islamophobia, We Have to Challenge the Laws that Enable It,” (blog post), CAGE, November 22, 2018, https://www.cage.ngo/if-we-want-to-stop-islamophobia-we-have-to-challenge-the-laws-that-enable-it.

13 Tamdgidi, Mohammad H., “Beyond Islamophobia and Islamophilia as Western Epistemic Racisms: Revisiting Runnymede Trust's Definition in a World-History Context,” Islamophobia Studies Journal 1, no. 1 (2012): 54–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 76.

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18 Heinze, Hate Speech and Democratic Citizenship, 47 (emphasis added).

19 As noted by Katharine Gelber, the use of “hate” to index hate speech is problematic because “it implies that the defining feature of hate speech is virulent dislike of a person for any reason.” Gelber, Katharine, “Hate Speech—Definitions and Empirical Evidence,” Constitutional Commentary 32, no. 3 (2017): 619–29, at 627Google Scholar. Gelber elsewhere notes that “the use of the term ‘hate’ to categorise ‘hate speech’ . . . implies that any expression of antipathy or dislike towards any target is substantively the core of the phenomenon.” Gelber, Katharine, “Incitement to Hatred and Countering Terrorism: Policy Confusion in the UK and Australia,” Parliamentary Affairs 71, no. 1 (2018): 28–49Google Scholar, at 31n3. I take these reservations further by forming a copula that ensures that “hate” is not treated separately from “speech.”

20 “IHRA 2020 Ministerial Declaration Adopted in Brussels,” International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, January 19, 2020, https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/press-releases/ihra-2020-ministerial-declaration-adopted-brussels.

21 The fullest legal engagement with this document to date has been Hugh Tomlinson, “In the Matter of the Adoption and Potential Application of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition of Anti-Semitism,” Free Speech on Israel, March 8, 2017, https://freespeechonisrael.org.uk/ihra-opinion/#sthash.kft5TkDo.dpbs. See also Sir Stephen Sedley, “Defining Anti-Semitism,” London Review of Books, May 4, 2017, 8.

22 An-Na‘im, Abdullahi Ahmed, Islam and the Secular State: Negotiating the Future of Shariʿa (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008)Google Scholar. An-Na‘im's argument is also developed in his Carl Heinrich Becker Lecture. An-Na‘im, Abdullahi Ahmed, “Shari'a and the Secular State in the Middle East and Europe,” in Carl Heinrich Becker Lecture der Fritz Thyssen Stiftung 2009 (Berlin: Fritz Thyssen Stiftung, 2009), 105–40Google Scholar.

23 Hallaq, Wael, The Impossible State: Islam, Politics, and Modernity's Moral Predicament (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), xiGoogle Scholar.

24 Hallaq, The Impossible State, xiii.

25 Hallaq, 72.

26 Hallaq, 72.

27 For one statement of this position from a free speech perspective see Weinstein, James, “Hate Speech Bans, Democracy, and Political Legitimacy,” Constitutional Commentary 32, no. 3 (2017): 527–83Google Scholar.

28 APPG on British Muslims, Islamophobia Defined, 32.

29 The call for a “legally binding definition” is repeated in APPG on British Muslims, Islamophobia Defined, 17, 30, 32, 42, 43, although the precise type of legal obligation envisioned is never reflected on.

30 “About Us: Striving for a World Free of Injustice,” CAGE, accessed May 8, 2020, https://www.cage.ngo/about-us.

31 CAGE, “CAGE Response to a Call for Evidence on a ‘Working Definition of Islamophobia/Anti-Muslim Hatred’” (London: CAGE, 2018), 9, https://www.cage.ngo/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/CAGE-Response-to-‘Working-Definition-of-Islamophobia_Anti-Muslim-hatred.pdf.

32 CAGE, “CAGE Response to a Call for Evidence,” 9.

33 CAGE, “If We Want to Stop Islamophobia.”

34 CAGE, “Discussions around the Definitions of Islamophobia Skirt the Real Issues We Need to Address,” Press release, November 29, 2018, https://www.cage.ngo/discussions-around-the-definitions-of-islamophobia-skirt-the-real-issues-we-need-to-address.

35 Dworkin, Ronald, to, forewordExtreme Speech and Democracy, ed. Hare, Ivan and Weinstein, James (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), v–ixGoogle Scholar. For a more extended discussion of this distinction as it relates to hate crime and hate speech, see Gould, “Is the ‘Hate’ in Hate Speech the ‘Hate’ in Hate Crime?”

36 Waldron, Jeremy, The Harm in Hate Speech (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 Weinstein, “Hate Speech Bans,” 532. Given that pluralism is as foundational for democracy as the citizen's prerogative of dissent, I do not follow Weinstein in making the legitimacy of antidiscrimination laws conditional on the absence of speech regulation. I do, however, agree that the undemocratic implementation of upstream laws potentially impugns the legitimacy of downstream laws.

38 Allen, Islamophobia, 190.

39 Beydoun, “Islamophobia,” 111.

40 Khaled A. Beydoun, “War on Terror, War on Muslims,” in American Islamophobia: Understanding the Roots and Rise of Fear (Oakland: University of California Press, 2018), 92–124.

41 Quoted in Iram Ramzan and Andrew Gilligan, “MPs Ditch Meeting with Muslim Group Mend over Islamist Claims,” Times, October 29, 2017, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/mps-ditch-meeting-with-muslim-group-mend-over-islamist-claims-rgxqn0s05. Further background is provided in a report by the Henry Jackson Society, which has the clear aim of discrediting MEND. Tom Wilson, MEND: “Islamists Masquerading as Civil Libertarians” (London: Henry Jackson Society, 2017), http://henryjacksonsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/HJS-Mend-Report.pdf.

42 Geertz, Clifford, “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture,” in The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 3–30Google Scholar. This point is further developed in Rebecca Ruth Gould, “Does Defining Racism Help Overcome It? Thick Descriptions in Lieu of Thin Definitions,” in Antisemitism, Islamophobia, and the Politics of Definition, ed. David Feldman and Marc Volovici (London: Palgrave MacMillan, forthcoming).

43 For a discussion of how hate crime legislation can be used to oppose anti-Muslim racism, see Jason A. Abel, “Americans under Attack: The Need for Federal Hate Crime Legislation in Light of Post-September 11 Attacks on Arab Americans and Muslims,” Asian American Law Journal, no. 12 (2005): 41–66.

44 House of Commons [United Kingdom], Register of All-Party Parliamentary Groups [as at 28 September 2017], https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmallparty/170928/british-muslims.htm.

45 For a detailed account see Chris Allen, A Momentous Occasion: A Report on the All Party Parliamentary Group on Islamophobia and its Secretariat (Birmingham: Institute of Applied Social Studies, 2011), http://conservativehome.blogs.com/files/appgislamophobia-allen-2011-2.pdf. For a summary of Allen's prolific work on Islamophobia and a discussion of the definition, see Allen, Islamophobia, 187–92.

46 Allen, A Momentous Occasion, 21–23.

47 Wilson, MEND.

48 Wilson, MEND, 81 (emphasis added).

49 At least three UK Jewish groups have been outspoken in their opposition to the IHRA definition: Free Speech on Israel, the Jewish Socialists Group, and Jewdas.

50 For further on this pattern within Islamophobic thought, see Mamdani, Mahmood, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror (New York: Three Leaves Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

51 APPG on British Muslims, Islamophobia Defined, 41.

52 David Cameron, “Extremism” (speech, Ninestiles School, Birmingham, UK, July 20, 2015), https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/david-cameron-extremism-speech-read-the-transcript-in-full-10401948.html. Cameron delivered this speech prior to the government's introduction of enhanced Prevent legislation.

53 APPG on British Muslims, Islamophobia, 37.

54 Mark Steyn, “The Future Belongs to Islam,” MacLean's, October 20, 2006, https://www.macleans.ca/culture/the-future-belongs-to-islam/.

55 Canadian Islamic Congress v. Rogers Media Inc., at 4 (Canadian Human Rights Commission, June 25, 2008), quoted in “Human Rights Complaint against Maclean's Dismissed,” Globe and Mail, June 28, 2008, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/human-rights-complaint-against-macleans-dismissed/article18452636/. Although the decision was widely reported and quoted in the Canadian press and law blogs at the time, the unpublished decision is no longer publicly accessible.

56 Elmasry and Habib v. Roger's Publishing and MacQueen (No. 4), 2008 BCHRT 378, at ii, 1, http://bccla.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/2008-BCCLA-Argument-Elmasry-Decision.pdf (accessed October 14, 2019).

57 Kenan Malik, “Fear, Indifference and Engagement: Rethinking the Challenge of Anti-Muslim Bigotry,” in Islamophobia: Still a Challenge for Us All, ed. Farah Elahi and Omar Khan (London: Runnymede Trust, 2017), 73–77, at 74, https://www.runnymedetrust.org/uploads/Islamophobia%20Report%202018%20FINAL.pdf.

58 Canadian Islamic Congress v. Rogers Media Inc., quoted in “Human Rights Complaint against Maclean's Dismissed.”

59 In the extensive literature on the “people of the book” within Islamic history that delineates these sociological dimensions in greater detail, key works include the following: Cohen, Mark, Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Yohanan Friedmann, Tolerance and Coercion in Islam: Interfaith Relations in the Muslim Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Milka Levy-Rubin, Non-Muslims in the Early Islamic Empire: From Surrender to Coexistence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). For a case study of these discriminatory regulations, see Rebecca Ruth Gould, “Wearing the Belt of Oppression: Khāqānī's Christian Qaṣīda and the Prison Poetry of Medieval Shirvān,” Journal of Persianate Studies 9, no. 1 (2016): 19–44.

60 Malik, “Fear, Indifference and Engagement,” 76.

61 Racial and Religious Hatred Act, 2006, c.1, § 1 (Eng.), https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/1/schedule/data.xht?view=snippet&wrap=true.

62 This provision is discussed and critiqued in S. Chehani Ekaratne, “Redundant Restriction: The U.K.'s Offense of Glorifying Terrorism,” Harvard Human Rights Journal, no. 23 (2010): 205–21, at 212; Gelber, “Incitement to Hatred and Countering Terrorism,” 33–34.

63 Gearty, Conor, “Human Rights in an Age of Counter Terrorism,” in War on Terror: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures, ed. Miller, Chris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 83–98Google Scholar, at 85.

64 H. M. Government, Prevent Duty Guidance, 2015, at 6 (UK), http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukdsi/2015/9780111133309/pdfs/ukdsiod_9780111133309_en.pdf.

65 This specific formulation is scrutinized in Gearty, Conor, On Fantasy Island: Britain, Europe, and Human Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 206Google Scholar.

66 Prevent Duty Guidance, 6.

67 This dimension of the legislation is critiqued in Wolton, Suke, “The Contradiction in the Prevent Duty: Democracy vs ‘British values,’” Education, Citizenship and Social Justice 12, no. 2 (2017): 123–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

68 Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006, c. 1, schedule § 29J (England & Wales), http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/1/contents (amending the Public Order Act 1986, c. 64).

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70 See Renton, James and Gidley, Ben, eds., Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe: A Shared Story? (London: Springer, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.