On 24 February 2024, Lee Anderson had the Conservative parliamentary whip suspended for his refusal to apologise for comments in a GB News discussion on an article by former Home Secretary Suella Braverman where she had stated that
“The truth is that the Islamists, the extremists and the antisemites are in charge now”.
Anderson alleged that “Islamists” controlled London, its mayor Sadiq Khan, and the Labour Party leader Keir Starmer, saying: “I don’t actually believe that the Islamists have got control of our country, but what I do believe is they’ve got control of Khan and they’ve got control of London, and they’ve got control of Starmer as well. Anderson refused to back down or apologise.
In response to Mr Anderson’s comments, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan called the comments “Islamophobic, anti-Muslim, and racist,” adding that “these comments pour fuel on the fire of anti-Muslim hatred.”
The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) likewise slammed Mr Anderson’s comments for “endorsing common talking points that peddle conspiracy theories and Islamophobic tropes of alleged Muslim takeovers of our country.”
But there has been a major public response across social media with most saying that accusations of Islamophobia are wielded to shut down debate on questioning Islamic agendas and on Islam itself.
Now the term Islamophobia itself only came to the fore towards the end of the twentieth century. In 1996, the Runnymede Trust established the Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia (CBMI), chaired by Gordon Conway, the vice-chancellor of the University of Sussex.
The Commission’s report, Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All, was published in November 1997 by the Home Secretary, Jack Straw. In the Runnymede report, Islamophobia was defined as “an outlook or world-view involving an unfounded dread and dislike of Muslims, which results in practices of exclusion and discrimination.”
The introduction of the term was justified by the report’s assessment that “anti-Muslim prejudice has grown so considerably and so rapidly in recent years that a new item in the vocabulary is needed”. But the term itself comes after that of Hinduphobia. This term dates from 1863 from within Britain itself and was in use in the UK media but ‘miraculously’ did the vanishing Indian rope trick.
However, the Runnymede Trust and other organizations formed to tackle racism and prejudice seem strangely allergic to it. Go onto any website of groups that have as their aim the need to tackle all forms of hatred and you will find Hinduphobia either missing or claims that it is itself a term employed by hate groups of an amorphous mass variously called ‘Hindutva’, ‘Hindu right-wing’, Hindu ‘nationalists’ or Hindu ‘fascists’. This is even though the evidence demonstrates otherwise.
Now according to most popular commentators like Douglas Murray, and Mahyar Tousi or authors like Robert Spencer, the accusations of Islamophobia are used as a cover by hate groups to expand Islamic agendas and also spread antisemitism in particular like we are seeing presently.
Yet any scrutiny finds the debate shut down with accusations of racism and Islamophobia which is the original purpose for which it was needed. It is no longer used to tackle hatred of Muslims or Muslimphobia. In a vicious downward spiral, this only increases actual Islamophobia or better Muslimphobia to be exploited by xenophobic, racist, and neonazi groups on the one hand, and by the parallel jihadi groups on the other.
As with the left-right split, this bifurcation is also artificial because what they have in common is the desire to shut down debate and only view matters via the lowest common tribal denominator of religion or race.
Hinduphobia on the other hand is suffocated at birth from being discussed because it can be discussed. The recognition that this form of hate exists does not shut down debate but opens it up. It does not say that Hindu practices and culture cannot be questioned but invites inquiry.
While the Western mindset sees this Hinduism as transfixed and will not budge from using a reductionist argument that brings it down to caste, sati, Aryan racial myths, superstition, obscurantism and backwardness, the reality is that by opening this ancient civilisation up to questioning will provide a more honest appraisal.
That is the biggest irony. Islamophobia is recognized while Hinduphobia is a term with a long history and was invented in Victorian England yet is barely recognized, for the very reason that doing so would open up free discussion. The present situation is hardly harmonious with a healthy democracy and functioning civil society.
Hinduism itself invites to be questioned as nothing should be based on blind faith and we welcome that but then Hindus need to be given an equal platform to debate back the biased points spewed out by a Hinduphobic racist media and academia.
This is often spearheaded by the so-called left-wing who lead the Hinduphobic lynch mobs as both judge and jury like their racist forefathers. This apartheid against Hindus needs to end or it sends a wrong message that only violent behavior is respected as we are seeing in London with the mass protests going on.
A case in point is that when HHR visited the now-defunct Commission for Racial Equality in 2006, the hostile environment was evident from almost all present. These detractors lost their nerve when they found out that HHR did not want laws passed to ‘protect’ Hinduism from criticism, but on the contrary, wanted a free debate to respond to the critiques because we do believe that all religions should be questioned but we should also hear the response which mostly always denied to Hindus.
