Impending legislation originally intended to crack down on revenge porn should include the prohibition against having images of Muslim women’s faces without their hijab if the photos were taken without their express permission.
The Women and Equalities Committee in the House of Commons argued that such pictures should be considered “non-consensual intimate images” and, therefore, come with similar penalties as possessing child pornography, including lengthy prison sentences, the Daily Mail reported.
If government ministers sign off the committee’s proposal, it could become a crime in Britain as early as this year.
At present, the law defines “intimate” images as those in which a person is seen fully or partially nude, is engaging in a sexual act, or is seen using the bathroom.
Responding to the call to criminalise some pictures of Muslim women without hijabs, David Spencer of the Policy Exchange think tank said: “Tackling the problem of ‘revenge porn’ is clearly important – but expanding this to so-called ‘culturally intimate’ images risks extending the criminal law too far.
“The police cannot be expected to wade into so-called ‘cultural’ issues when officers are already struggling to deal with the volume of stabbings, sexual assaults and thefts that occur every day. The Government should be cautious about creating yet more criminal offences.”
Remarkably, the proposed rule is already in a state of de facto enforcement in the United Kingdom, as illustrated by a recent case of an English police force withdrawing the mugshot of an Islamic State terrorist and reissuing it with her wearing a full-face covering after a court challenge.
It also comes as the Labour government is considering enshrining a contentious and some warn dangerous definition of so-called Islamophobia, which opponents have argued would provide special protections under the law to Muslims and create a “back door” blasphemy law in Britain.
The Labour Party itself has already adopted the definition of Islamophobia set out in 2018 by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) report on British Muslims.
The APPG claimed that some “classic Islamophobia” should include assertions of “Muhammed being a paedophile, claims of Muslims spreading Islam by the sword or subjugating minority groups under their rule.”
The report went on to claim that reporting on the child rape grooming gangs scandal, in which predominantly Pakistani-heritage Muslims sexually preyed upon young white girls, contained “Islamophobic tropes”.
Labour’s plans to institute the APPG’s definition have even been criticised by anti-Islamophobia campaigner Fiyaz Mughal, who said in January: “Any definition needs to have a number of caveats attached which protect the right of individuals to question religion, to question certain behaviours attached to cultural elements and the right to have free speech defended in relation to blasphemy.
“Bad behaviour wherever it is, in whichever religious group, needs to be called out. This does not mean that all Muslim or all Pakistani men are bad. But when there is a concentration of issues within a certain group, we must hold the line in defence of our core values.”
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