The government has announced a new definition of anti-Muslim hate that includes violence, harassment and prejudicial stereotyping – as it insisted the move will not curtail free speech.
Ministers say it is a working definition and a “tool for government and organisations to better understand, measure, prevent and address anti-Muslim hostility”.
Crucially, the definition is non-statutory – meaning it is advisory and has no legal backing.
Discrimination of someone due to their religion or belief is already unlawful under the Equality Act.
Communities Secretary Steve Reed told MPs that ministers had a duty to act against record levels of hate crime against Muslims, but that “you can’t tackle a problem if you can’t describe it”.
He also denied the definition would interfere with freedom of speech or create “blasphemy laws by the back door”.
Hate crimes against Muslims reported to police in England and Wales rose by almost a fifth in the year ending March 2025, to 3,199 offences.
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The figure does not include incidents reported to Metropolitan Police due to changes in its recording system.
Jewish people faced the highest rate of hate crimes, according to the government figures, with 106 incidents per 10,000 population.
Muslims were second, with 12 per 10,000 population.
In February last year the government set up a working group, led by former Tory minister Dominic Grieve, to come up with a definition of anti-Muslim hatred or Islamophobia.
But Sky News learnt in October that ministers were moving away from the word “Islamophobia” and towards “anti-Muslim hostility”.
Alongside the new definition, ministers have set out an accompanying text which says freedom of speech and expression are protected by law, which includes criticising or ridiculing a belief, including Islam.
“Portraying it in a manner that some of its adherents might find disrespectful or scandalous,” is also legal, the text says.
Anti-Muslim hostility is intentionally engaging in, assisting or encouraging criminal acts – including acts of violence, vandalism, harassment, or intimidation, whether physical, verbal, written or electronically communicated – that are directed at Muslims because of their religion or at those who are perceived to be Muslim, including where that perception is based on assumptions about ethnicity, race or appearance.
It is also the prejudicial stereotyping of Muslims, or people perceived to be Muslim including because of their ethnic or racial backgrounds or their appearance, and treating them as a collective group defined by fixed and negative characteristics, with the intention of encouraging hatred against them, irrespective of their actual opinions, beliefs or actions as individuals.
It is engaging in unlawful discrimination where the relevant conduct – including the creation or use of practices and biases within institutions – is intended to disadvantage Muslims in public and economic life.
Speaking in the Commons, shadow communities minister Paul Holmes said the definition risked “hindering legitimate criticism” – which Mr Reed rejected.
“We will not do what [the Conservatives] did and stand by and simply watch while Muslim communities face targeted abuse in ways that any decent country would consider to be absolutely intolerable,” he replied.
Mr Reed announced the new definition as he unveiled a wider strategy on social cohesion.
The British Muslim Trust welcomed the move, with chairman Shabir Randeree saying it would “help guide institutions that have too often been too slow or too weak in their responses to incidents a tolerant and respectful country like ours must never accept”.
The government is to also appoint a special representative on anti-Muslim hostility to engage with communities and help facilitate understanding and implementation of the definition.
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Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer visited a community centre in London on Monday to speak with residents about how the government was trying to protect people from the impacts of the war in the Middle East.
He said “we mustn’t let” the conflict drive apart communities in the UK, and that Muslim and Jewish communities in particular needed reassuring.
Mr Reed also told MPs in the Commons that the government was protecting Jewish communities with “record funding for security at synagogues and schools, millions of pounds to tackle antisemitism in schools and universities, new laws to stop abusive protests outside places of worship”.
He added: “Today, we are going even further to tackle antisemitism in schools and colleges and in the healthcare system, and crucially, clamping down hard on the extremism which so often targets Jews first of all.”
