Labour's new Home Secretary wants to shut down your free speech

Here's how you can resist and register your opposition

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This post is critically important so please read until the end as there is something specific I am asking our British readers to do.

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Keir Starmer, his new Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, and the Labour government are currently pressing ahead with an insidious plan to impose a dangerous new definition of ‘Islamophobia’ on the country, one that will dramatically restrict what the British people can, and cannot, say about Islam.

I’ve written about the dangers of this backdoor blasphemy law before, pointing out how it will be used to control and contain the public debate about Islam.

Those who are currently working behind closed doors on imposing this definition on our taxpayer-funded public institutions will tell you these fears are unfounded. That this is just about ‘making the country a nicer place’. That it’s ‘non-statutory’.

But this is nonsense.

Why?

Because an earlier version of this definition, published in 2018, and endorsed by the Labour Party, made clear what its architects want to try and stop.

That earlier definition specifically said that talking about the Pakistani Muslim rape gangs, talking about the demographic spread of Islam in negative ways, and talking about ‘Muslim entryism’ in Western politics (which groups like the Muslim Brotherhood specifically call for) could all be considered ‘Islamophobic’.

Astonishingly, shortly before Elon Musk revived global interest in the UK rape gang scandal, that earlier definition said discussing and debating the mass rape and sexual assault of our children, at the hands of Pakistani Muslim gangs, could be considered “a form of anti-Muslim racism”.

Seriously. It actually said this.

By warning people off these topics, by imposing these speech codes, it clearly sought to cultivate the culture of silence that enabled the rape gangs to operate to begin with.

And just look at some other examples of why this is all so deeply problematic.

Nigel Farage’s recent pledge to ban the Muslim Brotherhood, too —a group that was established with the specific aim of infiltrating state institutions—would also, under this earlier definition, have no doubt been branded ‘Islamophobic’ because of this open reference to ‘Muslim entryism’ (which, again, was a well-documented plan).

And then, only yesterday, lawyer Tom Cross KC pointed out, in The Times, how Labour’s Orwellian definition could also be used to undermine policing, being used by activist lawyers and criminals to object to Muslims being arrested for violent and sexual crimes, potentially influencing sentencing, and undermining the principle of equality before the law. It is, in short, riddled with serious problems.

And as if all that wasn’t concerning enough, now we learn that our country’s new Labour (and also Muslim) Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood publicly endorsed this earlier and extremely troubling definition of ‘Islamophobia’, back in 2018.

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In other words, the very Labour Minister who is responsible for our country’s borders, policing, security, and counter-terrorism, only a few years ago, publicly endorsed a definition of ‘Islamophobia’ that essentially sought to muzzle public debate over extremist Islamism and the tactics used by the likes of Muslim Brotherhood.

Seriously. This is where we are now as a country.

And, even more shockingly, when Conservative MP Nick Timothy this week asked Shabana Mahmood in the House of Commons whether she now firmly rejects that earlier definition she refused to do so (watch here).

What we have, then, is a major problem.

A Labour government, supported by hapless Tories such as Dominic Grieve, who was so committed to free speech that he openly campaigned for years to try and overturn the vote for Brexit, is pressing ahead with what I would argue is an open attempt to restrict our free speech about the rise and spread of Islam in Britain.

Which raises the obvious question: what can we do about it?

Today, I am asking all my readers in the UK to complete this form, created by our friends and fellow Freedom Fighters over at the Free Speech Union.

This form will produce for you a bespoke letter that you can then forward to your Member of Parliament, registering your concern and opposition to this definition of ‘Islamophobia’ (I recommend copying and pasting the letter it will produce into your e-mail and then just adding your local MP’s e-mail address and press send).

Click on this link, scroll to the end of the page, and follow the instructions.

If you do not want to be included in the Free Speech Union mailing list then make sure you untick that box.

Look, let me just be frank for a moment.

This is about making it clear that countless British people are fundamentally opposed to this latest attempt to erode our free speech and impose new speech codes on our country.

This is about making it clear that, no, we will not allow debate and discussion about crucial issues that will determine the shape and destiny of our country to be shut down by an insidious Censorship Industrial Complex —that we will not allow our freedoms, freedoms which our ancestors died for, to be curtailed in this way.

And this is about making it clear to those who claim to represent our country that these islands are the United Kingdom, the home of individual liberty, free speech, and free expression –not some crackpot dictatorship in the Third World where certain topics cannot be discussed in case they ‘offend’ certain groups the Labour Party and the ruling class want to keep on side and prioritise over other groups in society.

This is the UK, this is Britain, this is England. This is not Afghanistan.

So, do me, you, and our children a favour by sending off that letter right now.

Thank you for reading. And thank you for taking action.

Matt

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