Keir Starmer’s Labour are set to abandon the term “Islamophobia” over trumped-up ‘free speech’ concerns. And, one expert has warned that abandoning the term ‘Islamophobia’ is to abandon systemic analysis. Given Labour’s terrible record on Islamophobia such a move would be nothing short of catastrophic. Leeds University sociologist Shaheen Kattiparambil is one of many who oppose the move.

Writing in Middle East Eye, Kattiparambil said:

Terminology determines whether discrimination is approached as an issue of individual prejudice, or as a manifestation of systemic, racialised power embedded in national and international structures.

Labour’s plan to use the term “anti-Muslim hate” would be to abandon the systemic framework essential to understanding this form of racism, and to confronting it.

The distinction, he says is;

not merely linguistic, but politically and globally consequential.

In other words, Labour would be moving away from an established academic tradition of understanding Islamophobia as a manifestation of racism. By abandoning the term, they would effectively be diluting its meaning, and undermining its meaning.

Starmer’s step down

The term has not been adopted lightly, or because it is academically trendy. For Kattiparambil:

The term Islamophobia has grown out of decades of advocacy, scholarship and lived experience among Muslim communities.

It names a reality that victims themselves recognise; a reality that connects their everyday encounters of suspicion, exclusion and violence to wider systems of power.

This change, argues the expert, would:

…erase that recognition, denying Muslims the political language through which they have made their experiences visible and credible.

And it is hard to imagine the terms for adjacent forms of racism being expunged in this way:

In comparable cases, such as antisemitism and anti-Black racism, the importance of naming has long been accepted.

Indeed Kattiparambil, who writes on Islamophobia, critical Muslim Studies and decoloniality, said:

…Keir Starmer had no qualms using the term “Hinduphobia” in addressing the concerns of the British Hindu community.

Rewriting power

Starmer’s commitment to existing colonial relations is hardly a secret. He’s draped himself in the Butcher’s Apron from day one.

That’s before we get to his explicit support for Israel in its genocide against the majority Muslim Palestinians and his Reform-esque assault on refugees and migrants – many of whom are from Muslim-majority nations Britain has occupied or bombed.

Flaking on the clearly established language is very on-brand. It is also a “symbolic and political regression”. And, an act of supreme arrogance.

International institutions have hardly covered themselves in glory lately. But the term is good enough for the UN and various other international and civic bodies. Who then is Keir Starmer to deny anyone – let alone two billion people worldwide – the language to describe their own oppression.

Nobody, that’s who.

Featured image via the Canary

By Joe Glenton

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