S2.06 Emma Webb: Defining Islamophobia

In November 2018 the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on British Muslims, chaired by Anna Soubry MP, published its report, Islamophobia Defined, to establish a working definition of Islamophobia. Subsequently the definition has been adopted by local councils and political parties, even before the Home Affairs Select Committee concluded their assessment of the proposed definition. In the wake of this our guest, Emma Webb, produced an anthology that brought together concerns about the APPG definition of Islamophobia from a variety of perspectives. It included atheist, secularist, religious and academic assessments of why the Islamophobia definition is not only unfit for purpose, but also poses a danger to civil liberties in the United Kingdom, particularly freedom of expression, and journalistic and academic freedom. It may be downloaded here: http://www.civitas.org.uk/content/fil... Emma Webb is director of the Forum on Integration, Democracy and Extremism (FIDE), a project of Civitas. She was formerly a research fellow at the Centre on Radicalisation and Terrorism (CRT) at the Henry Jackson Society. Her published work focuses on Islamist extremist networks and their abuse of civil society, the education and charitable sectors, and domestic funding. She has been published in The Times, the Telegraph, Independent and Spectator, among others and has appeared on international media discussing the risks posed by terrorism and extremism in Europe. Emma holds degrees from the University of Cambridge and King’s College London.