Report

‘Islamophobia’ revisited

This report from UK think tank Civitas looks at how Islamophobia is defined by local authorities.

Islamophobia Revisited by Hardeep Singh builds on a previous collection of essays on Islamophobia published by Civitas in August 2019. Hardeep Singh returns to this topic, and in Islamophobia Revisited conducts a thorough investigation into how Islamophobia is defined by local authorities describing a ‘panoply’ of different approaches and definitions. In response to a large-scale Freedom of Information exercise, Singh discovers that one in seven (15.6 per cent) local authorities in England have adopted a definition of ‘Islamophobia’ described by the government as ‘not fit for purpose’. Singh finds 22.7 per cent of Welsh local authorities and 25 per cent of Scottish local authorities have adopted this disputed definition. The adoption of a disputed definition of Islamophobia has ‘taken on a life of its own’ according to Singh, who raises concerns over conflating race with religion and claims that ‘Islamophobia is a type of racism.’