Rochdale by-election: how I was cancelled and discriminated against by the Green Party

By Guy Otten

Guy is a vice-chair of Greater Manchester Humanists, a humanist chaplain with the Greater Manchester Mental Health Trust, a member of the Atheism UK Council, and a founder member of Northern Atheists.

I’m a proud humanist and atheist, and I believe strongly that atheism and humanism need to be normalised in our society, so that rejection of religion is seen as fully mainstream, and not as something slightly odd which has to be tolerated. Arguably, we have made progress towards this standard over the last 60 years, particularly as, now, a majority of our population are frankly not bothered with religion. But there are strong forces opposing us, as my experience during the recent by-election in Rochdale demonstrates. And further, the attitude of “not being bothered” about religion extends in my experience to suspicion against those of us who are bothered to call it out and criticise it.

For many years, I've been debating on social media with believers, mainly Christian and Muslim. I've also publicly debated a Muslim Sheikh and a Muslim “scholar”/extremist. I've delivered talks on the origins of Islam, demonstrating how objective research now shows that those origins are in fact quite different from the origins story set out in the Standard Islamic Narrative (often referred to as “SIN”). I'm critical of the moral defects evident in all the Abrahamic religions. Recently, I was talking with a Christian who didn’t know that Exodus 21 regulated and implicitly approved slavery, and is paralleled by sections of the Hadith (attributed reports about what the Islamic prophet Muhammad said and did).

At the same time, I’ve also pursued good personal relations with Muslims, Christians and other believers. I run a Humanist-Christian dialogue group which has been meeting quarterly online for about four years. I serve as a humanist chaplain working alongside Christian and Muslim clerics and a rabbi. I attend a group called “Challenging Hate Forum” run by the Dean of Manchester Cathedral, and I went on a “pilgrimage” to Auschwitz with them about six years ago. I’m a supportive member of the Muslim-Jewish Forum in Greater Manchester and I regularly attend Iftar meals (the meal after sunset by which Muslims break their daily fast during the Ramadan). This does not mean I hide my criticism of those religions; these groups know where I’m coming from. Of course, I reject bigotry and abuse of any individuals including Muslims; I don’t find this conflicts with being critical of religion generally as sets of ideas and belief systems. I acknowledge that this is sometimes a difficult line to keep clear when criticising Islamic claims, ideas and theology.

Islamophobia

It was not therefore surprising when some old tweets were discovered, selectively taken out of context and used to make me look Islamophobic. One amusing example which circulated on the media shows me telling a joke about how many Muslims does it take to change a light bulb. The excerpt circulating on social media omitted the context that this joke was one of a string of “How many Christians, Buddhists, Jews etc. does it take to change a light bulb”. This neatly illustrates three problems: (1) Islam is treated differently from other religions; (2) some people think that Muslims cannot take a joke; and (3) any mention of Islam in other than a flattering context is risky.

The term islamophobia is problematic exactly because it conflates bigotry and hatred of Muslims on the one hand with the free criticism and analysis of Islam on the other. The definition which seems influential is the legal definition proposed in November 2018 by the All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims, namely: “Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness” (note 1). The vagueness of this definition is striking, for the following reasons:

• “Expressions of Muslimness” – these words can encompass anything, whether bigotry, humour or honest and serious analysis.

• “Perceived Muslimness” – in addition to being as vague as “expressions of Muslimness”, this raises the additional issue of who is doing the perceiving, and it effectively empowers Muslims to claim persecution when none is intended or no offence should be taken, and the woke (note 2) are similarly encouraged by it to close down free debate.

• The phrase “rooted in racism” is also unclear. If it claims that islamophobia is a form of racism, it is a simple category error, because Islam is (obviously) not a race, but a religion, shared by many races. If, however, it is trying to suggest that islamophobia somehow shares a wellspring of prejudice, bigotry and hatred with the fear, suspicion and rejection of “the Other” that also generates racism, then I think this may be correct as to the bigotry, hatred and prejudice covered by islamophobia. But as far as genuine, informed criticism of Islam as a set of ideas is concerned, the phrase is damaging to a healthy debate in a democratic society.

The result of this vague, loose and erroneous definition is that islamophobia has become a weapon used both by Muslims to try to shut down any criticism of Islam, and also by the woke to demonstrate how virtuous or right-on they are or to disable opposition. Nobody can say anything about Islam which they, or an apologist, disagree with without incurring the accusation of islamophobia. My rejection of islamophobia as a concept is not something I have just thought up by the way. It has a distinguished and thoughtful history of support. See most recently Kenan Malik’s article in The Observer on 3 March 2024.

The Green Party and Rochdale

I've been an active member of Rochdale Green Party for the four years I've lived in Rochdale. In 2023, the local party found there was a dearth of candidates offering to be selected to stand in the two parliamentary constituencies in the borough. I therefore put my name forward for the Rochdale constituency and was formally selected. I knew that the then Rochdale MP (Tony Lloyd) had been fighting cancer for some years, and expected that he was unlikely to stand in the forthcoming General Election, but I didn't anticipate his so sudden death, resulting in the by-election on 29 February 2024.

The Green Party nationally is a party dominated by the woke. For instance, a significant number of party activists have been suspended in recent times over allegations that they have uttered, or even permitted the utterance of, gender critical ideas. I appreciate that any political party has to have (and enforce) party lines to achieve some form of coherence in its platforms. Sadly, I think that line in my case is in the wrong place.

In the weeks before the Rochdale MP unexpectedly died, the local party was approached by Muslims in Rochdale angry at the poor response to Gaza by the Labour Party (the traditional political home of many Muslims). Many were indicating that they would be voting Green. Some pundits began to suggest the Green Party would be the main challenger and beneficiary of the disaffected Muslim vote in the General Election. So when the woke looked at my record they found an easy way to counter me and the Green Party. George Galloway, who won the Rochdale by-election standing as an independent candidate, skilfully harvested the disaffected Muslim vote in the town. I'm frustrated that the Green Party was unable to take advantage of this potential advance in our fortunes in Rochdale. The takeaway lesson for any free thinker, free speaker and debater standing in a prominent election, is to deactivate their social media accounts to head off this kind of problem.

Discrimination against non-belief

Sadly both Islamophobia and antisemitism are confused in that they cover both legitimate criticism of ideas or policies with illegitimate bigotry against individuals, so that almost any comment, or even independent mention, of either Islam or Judaism/Israel is liable to be interpreted as islamophobic or antisemitic. This problem infects government, mainstream parties, and public and private institutions, bodies and companies.

While supporters of broad definitions of the terms islamophobia and antisemitism may believe they are being progressive and inclusive, in fact the effect of their actions is to exclude anyone they don’t agree with. The impact is damaging to our democratic system. The protests against the war in Gaza, for instance, are not understood by government as pleas for the end of the suffering caused by the war, but rather as antisemitic and support for the extermination of Jews. I'm among very many who do call for an immediate ceasefire and serious negotiations, leading to a just settlement in Israel/Palestine where the rights and needs of all will be upheld and respected.

The effect on atheists and humanists wanting to speak freely on these matters is that we are liable to be cancelled and closed down. In this way, Islam is being given religious privilege and a free pass. We are being wrongly denied our birthright of freedom of speech, and we have become victims of discrimination – a discrimination that does not affect us when criticising Christian or other religious ideas. Worse, it undermines the desperate need to educate the public on the historical, ethical and other defects in Islam, some of which I argue create a supportive “hinterland” for Islamist terrorism which the UK and other countries (including Muslim ones) have suffered from for decades. While the concept of Islamophobia effectively hides dangerous Islamist ideology in the UK, it also disables our society from detecting, and trying to counter, such dangerous ideology.

This is a dangerous step backwards for society generally, where it is high time that higher secular standards are required of religious groups. We cannot, for instance, have clerics operating indoctrinating madrassas, supporting jihadi groups or advocating the murder of gay people. For us humanists, in our struggles to combat religious privilege and normalise atheism and humanism, we must call it out.

Notes

1. I gleaned this wording from a briefing published by the Free Speech Union.

2. By “woke” I mean those who, believing they are socially and politically aware, in fact deny freedom of speech and seek to cancel those who argue rational cases they regard as offensive – usually to trans people or Muslims.