How can something be a 'phobia' if there isn't an official definition for it?

RIGHT?

Especially when one might already, horrifyingly enough, be living in a country with a penchant for trampling all over the few rights and freedoms its citizens have left in the name of things officially on the books as anathemas to that very same government.

Things like Facebook posts and flag waving or criticizing government officials. 

They're 'hate speech' now. And as such, will earn you a knock on the door from the prime minister's Starmtroopers should you indulge in what used to be known as 'free speech.'

There is no free speech in the UK contrary to what Keir Starmer claims. God forbid you criticize his policies. pic.twitter.com/Lmg3ny7kcF

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) March 1, 2025

As Professor Turley noted, God forbid you hold truly icky views no decent person would endorse, and, while you live with yer mum, you've collected items that make a British bobby's blood run cold.

We often discuss how defending free speech often means defending those who we find thoroughly  grotesque or offensive.  In that sense, Nicholas Brock, 52, is the ultimate personification of the price we pay for free speech. The neo-Nazi was given a four-year sentence for what the court called his “toxic ideology” based on the contents of the home he shared with his mother in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  In my view, the only thing more troubling than Brock’s hateful views is the decision to criminalize the holding of such views.  It is an example of the continued erosion of bright-line protections of free speech in the United Kingdom and other European countries. Judge Peter Lodder QC declared “I do not sentence you for your political views, but the extremity of those views informs the assessment of dangerousness.” That is a fine distinction that allows for sweeping criminalization of political viewpoints.

The fellow was one scumbag view too far for the British magistrate's sensibilities. He hadn't done anything but live in an England where the right to be a person with vile ideology by anyone's standards is gone.

...This case is part of a general erosion of free speech in the United Kingdom. We have been following (here and here and here and here and here and here and here) the worsening situation in England concerning free speech. The problem is trying to draw such lines rather than embracing free speech as protecting not just popular but unpopular and even hateful speech. Once you start as a government to criminalize speech, you end up on a slippery slope of censorship. What constitutes hate speech remains a highly subjective matter and we have seen a steady expansion of prohibited terms and words and gestures. As noted in a prior column, free speech appears to be dying in the West with the increasing criminalization of speech under discrimination, hate, and blasphemy laws.

Unless you belong to one of the protected classes. 

White working-class young girls do not fall into any of those protected categories, but I bet you can guess who does.

...The idea took hold this past November when four of the councils in cities hardest hit by 'Asian grooming gangs' preying on their little girls inexplicably voted to declare the term Islamophobic because it 'perpetuated stereotypes.'

WHUT

Councils where young white girls were groomed and raped by British-Pakistani men have endorsed a definition of Islamophobia that brands the phrase “Asian grooming gangs” as racist.

Oxford, Newcastle, Manchester and Calderdale are four areas where the local councils have adopted a report that critics claim will silence whistleblowers trying to speak out against child abuse.

The report cautioned the phrase “Asian grooming gangs” was a modern repetition of “age-old stereotypes and tropes about Islam” of “sexual profligacy and paedophilia, or Islam and violence”, claiming that they “heighten the vulnerability of Muslims to hate crimes”.

It's always about how the Muslim community will be impacted, is it not? Never about how their members have impacted anyone else's community.

The concept of an official British government definition of Islamophobia has been kicked around for a long time but has always been pulled back as the third rail. No one wanted to be the Brit who introduced blasphemy laws to England.

Christopher Hitchens warned of going down that road years ago.

The party of Sadiq Khan and Keir Starmer -- here talking about Islamophobia since October 7 and how to criminalize free speech -- CANNOT AND WILL NOT DEFEND THE UK from radical Islam. End of story. https://t.co/AyyBCuJEDK

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) January 6, 2025

Give it up or give it to your deadliest enemy and pay for the rope that will choke you. This is very urgent business, ladies and gentlemen, I beseech you. Resist it while you still can and before the right to complain is taken away from you, which will be the next thing. You will be told you can't complain because you're Islamophobic. The term is already being introduced into the culture, as if it was an accusation of race hatred for example, or bigotry. Where it's only the objection to the preachings of a very extreme and absolutist religion...

And yet?

They are on the precipice of that very thing - that 'taking away the right to complain' and introducing what amounts to blasphemy laws in the land that once birthed the Magna Carta.

'Keir Starmer wants to bring through "Islamophobia" laws to protect Islamists from criticism. "Import the third world to Europe!" they said "multiculturalism is really super!" they said.' Well it’s not working out that way for most of us!'@LeoKearse on the Amsterdam attacks... pic.twitter.com/hp6BOfHGiQ

— GB News (@GBNEWS) November 9, 2024

In a country full of extremists.

ICYMI:

'I think you have more extremists in the UK than you have in the Middle East.'

Political analyst Amjad Taha says the word Islamaphobia is used to stop criticism of muslims.

📺 Freeview 236, Sky 512, Virgin 604
🔓 Become a GB News Member: https://t.co/mNsRsGCG3N pic.twitter.com/p56yF8Dkxr

— GB News (@GBNEWS) February 16, 2025

The 'Islamophobic!' accusation was already being employed as a cudgel to crush any further investigation of the grooming gangs plaguing the country and as a tool to smear parents, reporters, and advocates who were demanding justice and answers.

Accusations of “Islamophobia” are being used as a way to suppress the exposure of grooming gangs, a report has claimed.

The government is being urged to adopt a formal definition of anti-Muslim discrimination to be used nationally, which critics have said would effectively act as a blasphemy law.

On Tuesday, a report by the Policy Exchange think tank warned that the term had been “directly used to attack those who sought to expose the Rotherham grooming scandal”.

Andrew Norfolk, the Times investigative reporter who broke the story, was accused of working to “amplify an increasingly prevalent Islamophobia” in a 72-page report by left-wing academics from the Media Reform Coalition.

Sarah Champion, the Yorkshire MP who fought for victims of the scandal, and Dame Louise Casey, who led an inspection of children’s services at Rotherham council, were shortlisted for the “Islamophobe of the Year” award by a prominent UK Muslim group, the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC).

How nice of the Labour authoritarians to consider giving them government cover to carry on and 'police fairly.'

Kind of a chilling headline from last month gives you a clue what the Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner has planned.

Angela Rayner to set rules on Islam and free speech

She's also the one expanding why the Starmtroopers appear on your door stoop.

...The creation of the council comes on top of plans by the Home Office to expand the recording of non-crime hate incidents for Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.

Delightful lady with a serious authoritarian complex.

The UK government has launched its new working group tasked with defining ‘Islamophobia’. Deputy prime minister Angela Rayner calls this a ‘crucial step’ in tackling anti-Muslim hate crime and bigotry. In truth, it is laying the groundwork for an official speech code that will make it even harder to discuss some of the most important, sensitive and politically fraught issues of our time.

British citizens will only be allowed 'reasonable' criticisms of Islam and they won't be the folks who decide what's reasonable and what's offensive.

...Under the APPG’s framework, deciding what is and isn’t ‘reasonable criticism’ of Islam is a matter of subjective interpretation. The APPG report proposed ‘tests’ for distinguishing between ‘reasonable criticism’ and ‘Islamophobia masquerading as “legitimate criticism”’. Yet such tests are so vague and open-ended that they would be impossible to police fairly. If Rayner’s Islamophobia working group adopts this approach, speech restrictions won’t be judged against objective legal standards, but against perceived intent, leaving those who dissent at the mercy of political and institutional gatekeepers.

The UK government insists that any new definition will be ‘compatible with the unchanging right of British citizens to exercise freedom of speech and expression’. But it is hard to take this claim seriously. The moment a definition like this enters public institutions, it risks becoming a speech code, even if it is not legally binding.

THEY'LL TAKE AWAY YOUR RIGHT TO COMPLAIN

Be careful, my man.

Will they defend Christianity equally?

Failure to do so gives the appearance of being hateful of Christians.

— Doc Zed (@BlueGr33n13) March 5, 2025

You almost sound as if you're complaining.