Baroness Shaista Gohir (I know… me neither) needs removing from the already nonsensical and hateful Government working group seeking to define Islamophobia for… er, well I’m not quite sure… Angela Rayner I think. Whatever, the opinionated Baroness needs to go with immediate effect. For my money she has defined herself as something of an enemy of the state I’m afraid, and a hugely partisan actor. And it is deeply chilling that this woman (and her opinions) has control over our lives.

She’s a peer of the realm. Good grief. I’ve eaten kiwi fruit with more intelligence. (If her social media gaffes are anything to go by at any rate). Why on earth does this country need yet another “working group on Islamophobia” anyway? Oh, silly me, because Angela Rayner and Keir Starmer need to shore-up their Muslim vote, of course. I’m digressing.

Here’s what got me practically spitting my bacon butty out this morning. A little while ago, you may remember, two horrible, vile, violent thugs attacked police officers at Manchester Airport.

One of them, a towering 20-year-old called Mohammed Fahir Amaaz, smacked Pc Lydia Ward (a woman about two feet shorter than he is) so hard in the face he broke her nose and knocked her out.

He then attacked Pc Ellie Cook – yep, another woman. What a guy! Check out the video – the level of violence is truly shocking.

Thankfully this violent piece of woman-hating scum was refused bail after being convicted of multiple assaults and is on remand awaiting what we can only hope is a very, very long custodial term.

And what did Lady Gohir make this cut-and-dried “he’s obviously a wrong-un” situation? She condemned the “police brutality” and compared the incident to the murder of George Floyd in 2020.

And it gets worse.

In 2019, she reposted a video from an anti-Islamophobia activist who claimed it showed six members of Humberside Police detaining a Muslim man, and that the officers had been suspended for their conduct, writing: “Another day of #racism #islamophobia. This time at @Humberbeat [Humberside Police] – Disgraceful & unnecessary use of excessive violence.”

Except it wasn’t. It wasn’t at all.

It was a video of an arrest made by West Midlands Police. An arrest which the Independent Office for Police Conduct concluded only “necessary and proportionate” force had been used in restraining the man and there was zero evidence for claims he had been discriminated against due to his race.

But facts just seem to be an irritating inconvenience for the narrative the 56-year-old Baroness seems to want to push.

But should a member of a Government working group be pushing any narrative? I’ll leave that one for you to decide.

Shaista has of course claimed she is the victim of a smear campaign and “misinformation to stop the vital task of the Working Group on a definition of anti-Muslim hatred/Islamophobia”.

I guess you can make your own minds up.

Lady Gohir is the daughter of Pakistani parents who came to Britain in the early 1960s and I think we can all agree, as the boss of Muslim Women’s Network UK and the holder of an MBE, she’s an impressive woman.

But she’s also everything that is wrong with our current muddleheaded take on discrimination. Discrimination is discrimination is discrimination. Racism is racism is racism.

There isn’t bad racism and not so bad racism (whatever Palestine Action, or indeed Diane Abbot, might tell you.) It’s all the same appalling ignorant filth and no single group needs, or should get, special pleading.

And I’m afraid offering special victimhood status to Muslims smacks of sectarianism. (We already have an MP in our Parliament who may as well be the Right Honourable Member for Gaza South, such was his single-issue campaigning.)

Why isn’t there a working group on defining anti-Semitism? Or anti-Hinduism? Or anti Zoroastrianism? Or of course anti-Christianism, that most battered and maligned religion of them all? Because we don’t need them of course.

Britain has robust and effective anti-discrimination laws… just ask Lucy Connolly.

Nope, Rayner’s “Government working group” is all about pro-Islam optics and shamefully courting Muslim votes.

We’ve been here before of course. In 2018 an All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims produced a paper called “Islamaphobia Defined”.

It was co-chaired by Wes Streeting and has a forward from Dominic Grieve. You’d think Grieve, who is Chairman of the current bonkers and not un-sinister attempt to define Islamophobia, might have pointed out that he’d already done this.

Kind of makes you wonder what the point was. Still, who cares? The mug British public will pay for it as per.

Another report in 2016, by Louise Casey, or Baroness Casey of Blackstock if you prefer, into the broader picture of discrimination in Britain led her to conclude: “Too many public institutions, national and local, state and non-state, have gone so far to accommodate diversity and freedom of expression that they have ignored or even condoned regressive, divisive and harmful cultural and religious practices, for fear of being branded racist or Islamophobic. …”

“At its most serious, it might mean public sector leaders ignoring harm or denying abuse.”

Wonder if anyone in Rotherham ever read it?

It’s time to end the narrative of Muslim as victim – literally none of my Muslim friends and associates recognise this stereotype.

“But attacks on Muslims are up” I hear you cry. And so they are.

As are attacks on Jews, attacks on women, attacks on trans-people..

We are becoming, unquestionably, an ever more divided, and intolerant, nation.

An island of strangers you might say… and that is what needs fixing.