The press regulator must not turn into a religious thought police

09/07/2019

Most British Muslims believe in and uphold the common values of our nation: the rule of law, the freedom to speak as they wish and to practise their faith as they see fit. It is a desperate shame that those who claim to act in their interests are now devoting such enormous amounts of energy to suppressing thorough and honest journalism about the one British community which most needs its story to be told to a wider public.

'Sensitive' and 'contextualised' reporting about Muslims may sound like a cause that any right-minded individual would support. But as Policy Exchange's meticulous research shows, what is being demanded by, for example, the Muslim Council of Britain is instead a kind of media apartheid, under which Muslim communities are reported on according to rules and conventions not applied to others; where work by non-Muslim professionals is judged by different standards from those who claim to follow the faith; and where those standards would be policed by self-appointed community leaders such as the MCB, sitting in judgment like a modern-day Lord Chamberlain.

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