‘Islamophobia’ Has Become a Weapon
7th March 2025
As all such proglodyte “X-ophobia” constructs do.
What do Tommy Robinson, LBC Radio, the Conservative Party and Sadiq Khan have in common?
The answer is that they have all been shortlisted for Islamophobe of the Year awards by the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), a British campaign and advocacy group with close links to the Iranian government.
It all sounds like a bit of a joke. The “Commission” used to promote the Awards in a semi-comedic style: as an irreverent swipe at those who have shown hatred to Muslims in public life. But there was always a bad smell about all this: having a laugh, about hatred. The apparently light-hearted format enabled fierce denunciations of others for the same reasons that are getting people killed. In 2015, the IHRC gave another of its Islamophobia Awards to the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo — just two months after jihadis slaughtered 12 people at the magazine’s offices in Paris.
The origins of this unsavouriness are no secret. In his 2023 review of the Prevent anti-extremism programme, William Shawcross described the organisation as “an Islamist group ideologically aligned with the Iranian regime”, with a history of “extremist links and terrorist sympathies”. Until recently, the IHRC’s director was Saied Reza Ameli, also secretary of Iran’s Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution.
Nevertheless, thanks to its campaigning on Islamophobia, the IHRC has had a notable influence on British public life. And Islamophobia is now a pressing concern of the British state and Labour government.
“Islamophobia” depends on the modern understanding of “phobias” as irrational fear — and ignores the historical fact that fear of Islam is totally rational, as demonstrated over the past 1400 years.