Is offending Muslims an inalienable right of the British people?

Last week, Labour finally revealed its long-awaited definition of Islamophobia, which incidentally, it is now terming ‘anti-Muslim hate’.

Some Muslims have welcomed the shift from the term ‘islamophobia’, which pathologises discrimination against Muslims as a justifiable fear. Others have accused the government of watering down the issue with vague language that does not parallel terms like ‘antisemitism’ or ‘homophobia’ that are used to protect other groups.

Of course, some controversy was inevitable. However, what has developed is a wave of right-wing hysteria about the perceived right to criticise Islam being taken away (even though, spoiler alert, it hasn’t). In fact, take even a brief glance at the media coverage of this new definition, and you’d be forgiven for thinking the Labour Party had demanded the entire country become Muslim.

With nuance and humanity completely out the window, sensationalist tabloid headlines have whipped up a culture-war-frenzy, warning in angry capital letters about this de facto blasphemy law that has now, apparently, been smuggled into British law.

Hysteria about a definition of Islamophobia supposedly ‘curbing free speech’ has been aplenty. Angry, white columnists whose entire careers have been made on the backs of incendiary remarks about Muslims have dedicated yet more column inches to accusing the government of undermining their God-given right to criticise Islam.

But that’s the point.

Right-wing Britons who already despise Muslims and detest immigration love to behave as though the right to criticise and offend is somehow paramount - and that any threat to that is a dereliction of the sacred covenant of being British.

But have we ever really paused to consider what this truly means? Why is it necessary to offend others? Or is it more about defending the status quo that allows Islam to be scrutinised, hyper policed, and surveilled under the guise of anti-terror measures?

The national pastime of the elite and powerful, to be able to criticise Islam without reproof, is almost always cloaked in the language of counter-terrorism. Politicians and supposed ‘tsars’ with expertise in countering extremism have soberly warned that daring to enshrine any protection for Muslims in law will amount to supporting Islamism.

Aside from the overtly racialised way that terrorism is mainly associated with Islam, we also mostly hear this argument about those who commit violent acts when perpetrators are Muslim.

I can’t remember the last time I saw a tabloid headline decrying the threat of Judaism on the West in response to Israel’s genocide of Palestinians. I don’t recall the government relying on its legal definition of antisemitism in order to safeguard the British right to criticise Israel or to curb the threat of British IDF soldiers returning to Britain without reckoning after murdering and maiming in the name of a foreign state.

I can’t remember the last time I saw a right-wing columnist decisively claim that Hindutva ideology is the biggest threat facing the UK today.

I don’t remember these instances because they don’t happen.

How convenient, then, that suddenly the blue-blooded British desire to offend disappears when we’re talking about groups who uphold rather than challenge the status quo.

What’s more, why does the hypothetical right of someone to criticise my faith come above my safety as a visibly Muslim woman in Britain?

Because petty politics aside, that’s what we are talking about here. The term ‘anti-Muslim hate’ might sound like nothing more than playground bickering, but what this ambiguous language obscures is that this is about a real, active - and growing - danger posed towards Muslims.

Islamophobia is at an all-time high - it is now the ‘most dangerous time in Britain to be Muslim’. Islamophobic assaults surged by 73% in 2024, and during the last few summers, we witnessed a blaze of anti-migrant hatred aimed at Muslims ignite across the country, with mosques, halal restaurants and hotels housing predominantly Muslim asylum seekers attacked.

Our politicians make no efforts to obscure their blatant Islamophobia, and our national news broadcasters peddle dehumanising rhetoric about us. Just a few days ago, in South-East London, a visibly Muslim woman in a hijab was mowed down by a car in a targeted hit-and-run attack as she left her local mosque.

When this is the climate of distilled, manufactured islamophobia that we are seeing, why is it then that the country seems more concerned about the right to offend? A formal definition could protect Muslims from being assaulted or even killed in the street, yet the media is obsessing over what this will mean for ‘free speech’.

The answer, of course, has been long on the wall for Muslims in the UK. It comes down to the fact that nothing, not our passports, not our accents, not our achievements or our frames of reference, will ever make Muslims equal in a country that demands absolute acquiescence to the state above all else.

The reason our safety comes second to someone’s right to critique and poke fun is because that is exactly where we sit on the pecking order in this nation, despite us calling it home.

These hysterical tabloid headlines lamenting the loss of free speech and accusing Labour of ushering in a blasphemy law via the back door reveal the racist double-standard sitting at the rotting heart of British democracy.

Despite what we are told, we are not all equal. For some, like Muslims, our right to exist safely and openly is a mere afterthought to the one and only true British value: maintaining an imperialistic, divisive agenda at all costs.

Nadeine Asbali is a freelance writer and secondary school teacher based in London. She is the author of Veiled Threat: On Being Visibly Muslim in Britain.

Follow Nadeine on X: @nadeinewrites

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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.