Maajid Nawaz Wants The Word “Islamophobia” Scrapped, Here’s Why

31 May 2018, 14:40 | Updated: 31 May 2018, 17:15

Anti-Muslim hatred is on the rise in Britain, but people should not be called Islamophobic just for criticising elements of Islam, Maajid Nawaz says.

The LBC presenter ripped into the The Muslim Council of Britain who have called on the Conservatives to launch an independent inquiry into allegations of Islamophobia within the party.

It aired "serious concerns" that anti-Muslim bigotry had "poisoned elements of the party".

But Maajid said the group had done its “fair share” to “contribute to the fear of Muslims” in Britain.

And he wanted the word Islamophobia axed, and instead replaced with Muslimphobia to allow people to scrutinise the religion “like every other religion is scrutinised”.

He said: “Islamophobia includes within it hatred of Muslims as a people and criticising and scrutinising Islam as a religion which is the right of every free-thinking human being anywhere in the world.

“So if I turned around and said that Islam today has a disproportionate problem with homophobia, with anti-freedom of religion stances and so on and so forth, chopping the hand of the thief - that's not Islamophobic that's talking about the doctrine of a religion that needs reform.”

Maajid added: “Therefore let's change the word, let's stop using the word Islamophobia which lends itself to accusations of blasphemy when in fact everyone should have the right to blaspheme.

“Let's use instead the word Muslimphobia which is more accurate, because it's wrong to hate Muslims as a people or individual Muslims as persons but it's perfectly legitimate to scrutinise Islam as a doctrine.”