TREVOR PHILLIPS has said he’s surprised by the Labour Party’s decision to suspend him over allegations of Islamophobia.
Phillips, former head of the UK’s equalities watchdog, is being investigated by the opposition party over several comments he made about Muslims.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme this morning, Phillips said: “I’m kind of surprised that what is and always has been an open and democratic party decides that its members cannot have a healthy debate about how we address differences of values and outlook.”
He added: “They say I am accusing Muslims of being different. Well actually, that’s true. The point is Muslims are different. And in many ways I think that’s admirable.”
Comments made by Phillips about some Muslims not wearing poppies for Remembrance Day and Pakistani Muslim men sexually abusing children in northern towns are among those being investigated, The Times reported.
Phillips, one of 24 public figures who wrote in the Guardian last year about refusing to vote Labour because of the anti-Semitism scandal, disagrees with the how the party has defined Islamophobia.
Labour adopted the definition after it was agreed on by an all-party parliamentary group on British Muslims.
“My objection is very simple. That definition said…that Islamophobia is rooted in a kind of racism – expressions of hostility towards Muslimness,” Phillips told the Today Programme.
He added: “First of all, Muslims are not a race. My personal hero was Muhammad Ali, before that Malcolm X.
“They became Muslims largely because it is a pan-racial faith. This is not a racial grouping, so describing hostility to them as racial is nonsense.”
London mayoral candidate Shaun Bailey described the Labour Party’s decision as “utter nonsense”.
In a tweet Bailey wrote: “I’ve known [Trevor Phillips] for years. He has spent his entire career fighting discrimination. This is utter nonsense.”
“There’s nothing he said that could be described as anti-Muslim hatred at all,” Spectator editor Fraser Nelson told BBC Politics.
Responding to those criticising the party’s decision, Ash Sarkar, contributing editor Novara Media, said: “His suspension pending investigation for racism is the exact process people were demanding Labour adopt regarding antisemitism. You can’t have one process for one minority, and not for the others.”
A Labour spokeswoman said Phillips’ complaints were being “fully investigated in line with our rules and procedures, and any appropriate disciplinary action is taken”.
Comments Form
2 Comments
Millions of Muslims fought in both World Wars. It should be of no consequence if some choose not to wear a poppy, just as many Christian or White people choose not to. It was an utterly bigoted comment for Phillips to make, but a lucrative one, no doubt.
Sir Trevor Philips betrayed Her Majesty’s African-heritage Subjects whilst he was Chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) by deliberately ignoring the expressed concerns of African heritage people who were opposed to Sir Tony Blair’s plan to abolish the CRE in 2006 and create the Equality & Human Rights Commission (EHRC) instead.
We all informed Sir Trevor Philips that the new EHRC would quickly abandon skin-colour prejudice experienced by African-heritage people.
Our fear was proved to be entirely correct.
By 2018 the EHRC had sacked all of its senior staff of African-heritage at the very moment the Home Office was illegally exiling Caribbean-heritage people to the Caribbean.
When will Sir Trevor Philips; Sir Lenny Henry, David Lammy and Dr Tony Sewell understand that the Labour Party and the Conservative equally share of hatred of African-heritage people-and this hatred is demonstrated by the collusion of Immigration laws by both parties, designed to exclude or limit African-heritage people ability to visit their extended families in England.