Theresa May Wants To Fight Islamophobia in the U.K.? You Must Be Joking.
▻https://theintercept.com/2017/06/20/theresa-may-wants-to-fight-islamophobia-in-the-uk-you-must-be-joking
Why did it require a horrific terrorist attack, resulting in the death of an unarmed Muslim man on the streets of London in the midst of Ramadan, to prompt May to decry anti-Muslim hatred as a form of “extremism”? Why did innocent blood have to be spilled in order for the prime minister to utter aloud the word “Islamophobia” for the first time?
And where were her earlier admonitions about the threat posed to the U.K.’s Muslims by far-right extremists? May served as Home Secretary for six years, across two parliaments, in charge of both the police and the security services, yet during that period she made only the odd, passing reference to the “hundreds” of anti-Muslim attacks in the U.K. each year while obsessing over the threat from “Islamist extremism.” Why did she not take seriously the claim made by one of her own Home Office officials to the BBC in 2014 that the government’s emphasis on the “global jihadist agenda” risked ignoring the growing domestic terror threat from the far-right? That particular anonymous official even issued this stark warning: “I wouldn’t want to get to the point where something happens and we look back and think actually, we should have addressed that as well.”