UK Politics

From the classrooms of Birmingham to the pages of Britain’s most powerful newspapers, one word has taken on extraordinary political weight: Islamist.

It is routinely presented as a neutral descriptor; a technical term separating religion from politics. But in practice, it functions less as analysis and more as accusation.

Once deployed, it renders Muslim political agency inherently suspect, irrational or dangerous. The term does not merely describe; it condemns.

British news is now firmly in the grip of what can only be described as an Islamism conspiracy theory: the idea that Muslims, imagined as a monolith, are hell-bent on undermining the state and “western civilisation” itself.

This same assumption now underpins the Prevent programme, where opposition to British foreign policy, anger over Gaza, or even robust expressions of Muslim identity are routinely framed as indicators of “Islamism”. Muslim political consciousness itself becomes the danger.

That assumption was on full display in the political mobilisation around the banning of Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters from a football match in Birmingham, amid well-documented concerns over racist chanting and public disorder. What should have been a routine policing decision was rapidly transformed into a national scandal.