Whitechapel is a place in Britain

“He’s offending our prophet,” says an aggrieved man in footage that went viral over the weekend, as a group of Muslims confronted a police officer in an attempt to make her silence a street preacher whose words had vexed them.

“This is East London, this is Whitechapel,” mumbles another man in response to the police officer’s reply that no one was obliged to listen to the preacher.

“He’s not in your home,” shrugged the officer.

“No,” protested yet another man, “But at the end of the day this is our community.”

Good for the police officer! It’s nice to hear the police defending speech for once. Still, I can’t blame the Muslim lads for being taken aback. It must have been strange to hear that the law, on this occasion, was not on their side. 

Muslims have a disproportionate likelihood of believing that religiously provocative perspectives should not be allowed to be expressed. More than half of British Muslims, for example, according to a J.L. Partners poll from 2024, believe that mere depictions of the Prophet Muhammad should be banned. According to a poll from ComRes, a quarter of British Muslims believe that violence against people who publish images of Muhammad can be justified.

It would be understandable to think that the state is generally receptive to religious prohibitionism. People are convicted for burning copies of the Quran. Schoolboys are excluded for damaging a copy of the Quran. Street preachers are arrested for disrespecting Muhammad. MPs openly advocate for blasphemy laws.

In less formal senses, a de facto blasphemy law has been maintained by fear and political correctness. Commentators and politicians tut about irreverence towards Islam. Comedians admit to being too fearful to satirise Islamic beliefs. To be clear, I’m not suggesting that there is anything necessarily meritorious about being critical or contemptuous of Muslims or Islam. But the impression has been created that it is actually off-limits.

This is not just a question of speech. It is a question of the very nature of society. To a great extent, Muslim community life has been accepted as a kind of state within a state. Ethnic clustering is common (Whitechapel, for example, is 51 per cent Asian). Muslim communities are quietly expected to exist in accordance with their own standards and rules. Sharia courts, for example, arbitrate over civil matters. So, in fairness, do Bet Din courts for British Jews — but it has been Sharia courts that have been exposed for inhumane discriminatory judgments against women. The Telegraph reported last week on the fear that the “privatisation of justice” has enabled the low prosecution of so-called honour crimes (fewer than 3 per cent of recorded cases have led to convictions).

Left-wing politicians, as Tom Scotson reported for The Critic last week, are explicitly appealing to Muslim voters, with Zack Polanski of the Greens welcoming a recent endorsement from the pressure group the Muslim Vote. Again, it is only fair to acknowledge that electoral sectarianism is multi-faceted. (MPs elsewhere have pandered to Hindu nationalists, for example.) But the obnoxious tendencies that this sort of electoral opportunism encourages were obvious when the Greens promoted (and then deleted) an interview with the Islamist media platform 5 Pillars.

The political establishment has failed to show some backbone when it comes to affirming free speech and securing the rule of law

What is frustrating about this piece, even for its author, is that it could have been written, with minor adjustments, at any time over the last two decades. For all of its occasional impotent grumblings about multicultural life, the political establishment has failed to show some backbone when it comes to affirming free speech and securing the rule of law. Inexplicably, it has failed to do this while also magnifying the need to do it by heightening mass migration from the third world. In scientific terms, this is like expanding a high-stakes field trial as an experiment is failing.

To return to the aggrieved men from the beginning of this article, I can’t really blame them for wanting the preacher to be stopped. While I strongly disagree with their attitude towards religious offence, it is more common around the world than a liberal approach. More pertinently, though, I can’t be surprised if they expect the state to intervene. Decades of institutional cowardice have very much created the impression that it will. 

Yet British institutions should take note of the officer who firmly, though civilly, rejected their demands. It is Whitechapel, yes, as the young man said, which means that it is British, which means that people should be able to speak their minds.