In a typical dinky English pub, over pints of Irish stout or IPA, if someone asks what is the most contentious term in British political discourse – and one that flouts all natural laws and tends to stick around despite evidence to the contrary, the natural tendency would be to smugly snap Brexit or Trident. But they would be wrong answers. Islamophobia, though neither Oxford nor Collin’s Word of the Year, is unlike any in the English lexicon.
Those who deploy it have turned it into the ultimate weapon with a nonpareil chilling effect. Those who point out its absurdity are immediately denounced as racists, white supremacists, Nazis, and all the other colourful epithets imaginable. The polite and ‘stiff upper lip’ club society and the organization men naturally don’t even venture anywhere near to this inflammatory term, even with a barge pole.
There’s a strong correlation between Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s ‘Minority’Rule’ and an observation by the anthropologist Margaret Mead on how the dedicated and motivated few can decisively outmaneuver the fragmented many. Democracy and public consensus are both a numbers game, but one where a mobilized plurality twists optics and gives the mirage of overwhelming, uncontested support. That simulation is then relayed by the media.
All it takes for imposition of any latest fad, jargon, or ideology is not the majority, but inflexible, dogmatically single-minded small faction or coterie. Others either sulk privately, become fence-sitters, or turn into passive followers, active mercenaries, or opportunistic beneficiaries.The Muzzle of Multi-KultiPakistani grooming gangs and the studied silence around them recently became a national scandal in the UK. The Prime Minister Keir Starmer had to step in to ward off allegations.
There were reports of the inaction and indifference of the law enforcement over these in many cases because of fear psychosis instilled by free and unsparing use of the adhesive of Islamophobia. This may sound farcical or too simplistic to believe, but facts are often stranger than fiction. Anyone who has observed the discourse over the recent years, especially the prevalent entryism and masquerading of soft and crypto Islamists as the liberal-left, knows the situation.
The Curious Case of Britain’s Islamophobia Industry
The curious case of Islamophobia Industry in Britain is a cautionary tale of road to hell being paved with good intentions. It denotes that without a common minimum civic ethos of values and belonging, modern liberal multiculturalism gets dysfunctional and prone to be gamed by those whose processed values are stacked against it. That’s the classic case of ‘Paradox of Tolerance’ by Karl Popper. The most clannish section with the biggest megaphone trounce all others in the competitive battle of agony and resentments to extract special exemptions or salve perceived slights.
Sir VS Naipaul, the Nobel Laureate and long-term resident of Wiltshire, an English county known for pre-Roman archeological ruins, satirized multiculturalism as ‘multi-kulti’ because of its amplification of identity grievances, and desire for exclusion it fans. Czar Turned Cassandra Sir Trevor Philips, a British citizen of Guyanan heritage, was appointed by the then Labour PM Tony Blair as the Commissioner of the newly instituted Race and Equalities Commission in 2003. His tenure lasted till 2012. As the de facto czar presiding over multiculturalism, Philips popularized the term ‘Islamophobia’.
In 2015, after commissioning many enquiries, he recanted his old views and went on record to say that race integration isn’t happening, some communities are different from others, and there are some in-built bugs in the grand edifice of Multiculturalism. Five years later, he was suspended by the labour party, and in an act of supreme irony, labeled an Islamophobe. Since then, the nexus of Islamophobia Industry and its concentric circle activists, cheerleaders, and enforcers has only grown.
The Muzzling of Free Speech
The insidious institutionalisation of Orwellian Thought Control and speech muzzling through the hoax called ‘Islamophobia’ has been amply debunked time & again. But like the quintessential phoenix, it rises strong again.Rupert Lowe, a British Member of Parliament(MP) from Great Yarmouth, has tabled a motion in the parliament affirming Freedom of Speech and right to criticize all religions, ‘including Islam’. Adnan Hussain, independent MP from Blackburn, responded to him on X, saying this in effect is tantamount to offending muslims and minorities.
The verbal spats and war of words notwithstanding, the tenor is absolutely clear – an unspoken omerta and absolute exemption from criticism. Trevor Philips rued his multiculturalism, but on the other side of the Atlantic a popular head of state, once the photogenic darling of the establishment press, who aspired to transform his country into ‘the world’s first multinational nation’, apologized for terming honour killings as barbaric. That was Justin Trudeau in 2011. But we never know when this would repeat in Great Britain or the liberal anglophone countries.
