Five Questions on Islamophobia in the UK with Peter Oborne

Oborne begins by telling the audience about the current state of Islamophobia across the United Kingdom. “It’s been a very serious matter, the hostility to Muslims, Islamophobia, for quite a long time in the United Kingdom,” Oborne notes. He further argues that the current conservative UK government under Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is positioning itself electorally to defame Muslims in a craven attempt at garnering political votes.

He goes on to discuss the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, which claims that  black and brown people are migrating to the West in order to  “replace” the white majority societies . Oborne states that “it’s [Great Replacement conspiracy theory] become part of the language of the British government. We’ve had talk about a sort of Islamic seizure of power and talk of radical Islamists threatening the House of Commons. This is all going on around me as I speak to you on this podcast. It’s one of the nastiest moments for 20 years or more.”

Oborne also notes that  “there is a progressive Islamophobia on the left, the mainstream left, and a bigoted far -right Islamophobia,” which both thrive on viewing Islam and Muslims as monolithic entities. He concludes by discussing British views regarding Israel’s war in Gaza and how that discourse is being policed by all sides of the political aisle in the United Kingdom.

Featuring

Peter Oborne once served as the former chief political commentator for The Daily Telegraph newspaper. He is author of The Rise of Political Lying, The Triumph of the Political Class, and The Assault on Truth: Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and the Emergence of a New Moral Barbarism. Mr. Oborne writes a political column for Middle East Eye and has previously sat as a commissioner for the Citizens Commission on Islam, Participation and Public Life and he won the Press Awards Columnist of the Year in 2012 and again in 2016.

Arsalan Iftikhar is Senior Researcher for the Bridge Initiative at the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University in Washington DC. Arsalan is a prominent human rights lawyer, an internationally recognized researcher on the topic of Islamophobia, and a global media commentator. He is the author of several books including FEAR OF A MUSLIM PLANET: Global Islamophobia in the New World Order and Scapegoats: How Islamophobia Helps Our Enemies and Threatens Our Freedoms which President Jimmy Carter called “an important book that shows Islamophobia must be addressed urgently”. Throughout his career, Arsalan has been a regular on-air commentator for National Public Radio (NPR) and his interviews have appeared on prominent global media outlets like CNN, Al-Jazeera English, BBC World News, The Economist, New York Times, Rolling Stone, NBC News “Meet The Press” & many more. A native of Chicago, Arsalan was awarded the 2013 Distinguished Young Alumni Award from Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, where he received both his undergraduate and law degrees.