Exposed: The dirty campaign to paint Muslim MPs as anti-British

Political terminology often takes on new life in public discourse, with certain words gaining traction for specific purposes. A notable case involves the term “weapons of mass destruction,” which surged in popularity during the early 2003 period.

This pseudo-scientific formulation sounded impressive. The media bought into it. It gave credibility to the false claims made by George W Bush and Tony Blair to justify the invasion of Iraq.

Following the invasion, the world discovered there had been no such weapons. Blair and Bush had used the term to lend a spurious legitimacy to an illegal war.

We need to pay attention when a novel word or phrase enters the national conversation. To ask who put it there, and why, and whether the term means what it claims.

The Term’s New Role

In this article, we examine one such term that has recently emerged in the British political lexicon: the word “sectarian.” While not new, it has been directed towards a fresh target. It’s being used to stigmatise British Muslim politicians.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, sectarianism is a “narrow-minded adherence to a particular sect (political, ethnic, or religious), often leading to conflict with those of different sects or possessing different beliefs.”

Synonyms for sectarian include “bigot,” “separatist,” “extremist,” “narrow-minded,” “fanatic,” and “intolerant.”

Historically, the term was applied to rival sides in the Northern Irish conflict. However, over the last 18 months, as deployed by prominent journalists and politicians, it has become central to a new and hostile discourse about Islam in Britain.

It has been turned into a weapon to categorise political opponents who are Muslim as separatist, illegitimate, and dangerous. Not as normal participants in British public life, but as a frightening and alien presence.

Political Figures and Media

The principal targets are the four Muslim independents who entered parliament at the last election. But who is responsible for introducing this new usage?

To find out, we employed the search machine for Hansard, the official record of parliamentary debates. Hansard shows that the first example of the new application of the term inside Parliament dates back to a speech by the Tory peer Lord Godson in July 2024.

In the debate that followed the King’s Speech, Godson raised the alarm about “rising extremism” and “the rise of explicitly communalist appeals.” He warned that “too many candidates in this month’s general election have sought to ride this sectarian tiger.”

Tory politicians quickly followed Godson’s adaptation of the term to create a discourse which paints Muslim participation in democratic politics as a threat. Within weeks, Robert Jenrick, an early challenger in the Tory leadership contest, was attacking “sectarian gangs who have been causing disruption, violence and intimidation.”

His rival for the leadership, Kemi Badenoch, followed suit, condemning MPs “elected on the back of sectarian Islamist politics; alien ideas that have no place here.”

Since then, senior Tories have deployed this attack line with increasing ferocity. In October, Jenrick claimed that the “House of Commons is being despoiled by these sectarian MPs.” In a column for the Sun, he said “sectarian MPs” have “polluted our politics.”

Similarly, Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, has repeatedly decried “sectarian politics” and warned against “those of the Islamic faith that want to push and push and push – and in some cases overtake the existing culture.”

Journalists have since echoed this language. In a recent column for The Spectator, Douglas Murray wrote that the notoriously racist Tory politician Enoch Powell had “understated our current problems.” Murray told readers that if Powell had “predicted that by the 2020s, significant numbers of Birmingham voters would vote in a Pakistani-born Muslim [a reference to the MP Ayoub Khan] on specifically sectarian, racial, religious lines… he would most likely have been deemed certifiable.”

He claimed that “Khan is one of a number of MPs voted in at the last election solely because of their appeal to the sectarian Muslim vote and specifically its obsession with Israel and Gaza.”

It is all too easy to see what is going on here: a campaign is underway to paint Muslim MPs as bigoted, extremist, intolerant and anti-British.