The Guardian: Britons’ right to protest is under threat like never before

Britons’ right to protest is under threat like never before. If you value it, speak up now, writes Imran Khan in The Guardian.

Writing on the appointment of Lord MacDonald, the former director of public prosecutions, by Shabana Mahmood, to lead a review of public order and hate-crime legislation, Khan states:

“We know that racialised groups remain disproportionately unprotected because perception still shapes how the law is applied. Despite repeated calls from Muslim communities, who experience the highest levels of recorded hate crime in England and Wales, objections are raised when it comes to legally addressing Islamophobia.

There is a palpable unfairness. Muslims are told they do not fall within the scope of race law, but at the same time the threshold for religious discrimination is often set too narrowly to capture how Islamophobia operates in practice. They are treated in public life as a single group and ascribed shared characteristics, regardless of individual belief or behaviour. Scholars of race have long shown that racial groups are not produced by biology but by societal and institutional practice.

So think now of how that affects Muslims as they exercise their rights as citizens: of the treatment of Muslims who protest against the genocide in Gaza. It is clear that this racialisation affects them in practice. Demonstrations calling for an end to the violence, many of them peaceful and family-oriented, are met with preemptive restrictions, heightened policing and public warnings that blur the line between protest and criminality. Protest is viewed as a source of risk rather than a democratic right.”

Read more in The Guardian.