THE ISLAMOPHOBIA STITCH-UP: PART THREE.

How 6.5% Captured the Institutions.

Muslims represent 6.5% of the UK population.

Sikhs represent 0.9%.

Yet when the government created a Working Group to examine hatred affecting both communities, Muslims achieved complete representation, whilst Sikhs achieved none.

That’s not proportional. That’s total capture.

The question isn’t whether this imbalance exists - the numbers prove it. The question is how. How does 6.5% exercise disproportionate institutional influence, whilst 0.9% gets excluded entirely?

Four mechanisms. Let’s go through them.

Mechanism One: Electoral Blackmail in Specific Seats.

Nationally, 6.5% is politically irrelevant. Can’t win elections with a 6.5% spread evenly.

But Muslim voters aren’t spread evenly. They’re concentrated.

Birmingham Hodge Hill: 77% Muslim. Bradford West: 67%. Bethnal Green & Bow: 59%. Birmingham Perry Barr: 57%. Bradford East: 54%. Blackburn: 51%.

In these constituencies, 6.5% becomes everything. An MP in Bradford West doesn’t answer to the national electorate. They answer to the 67% who can end their career in one cycle.

This isn’t theoretical. The 2024 general election proved it.

Gaza became the litmus test. Not NHS waiting times. Not the cost of living. Not housing. Gaza - a conflict 2,300 miles away - became the decisive issue in constituencies with large Muslim populations.

Labour lost seats they’d held for decades. Leicester South: Shockat Adam (Independent) defeated Labour on Gaza. Blackburn: Adnan Hussein won on Gaza. Dewsbury and Batley: Iqbal Mohamed won on Gaza.

George Galloway took Rochdale on a pure Gaza platform: “This is for Gaza.”

Across the country, 56 Labour MPs defied the whip to vote for a ceasefire - many representing constituencies with significant Muslim populations. They calculated that defying Keir Starmer was less dangerous than defying constituents.

That’s electoral blackmail. Not as a slur - as a description. “Support our position or lose your seat.”

Works because of concentration. Muslims represent 6.5% nationally but deliver 67% in specific seats. Creates 20-25 MPs whose careers depend on maintaining approval from Muslim advocacy organisations.

Compare Sikhs: 0.9% of the population. The largest concentration is in Slough at 16.7%. Nowhere in Britain do Sikhs represent even 20% of a constituency, never mind 60%+.

Result: Zero electoral leverage. No MP depends on Sikh votes for survival. No Sikh organisation can credibly threaten “support us or lose your seat.”

Working Group composition reflects this reality. Muslims have electoral leverage. Sikhs don’t. Therefore: Muslims 100%, Sikhs 0%.

Mechanism Two: Institutional Laziness.

Institutions don’t want hard work. They want efficiency.

Bristol City Council needs to “consult the community”? They don’t knock on 10,000 doors. They call pre-approved community groups. One phone call. Box ticked. “Community engagement” achieved.

Same nationally with Muslim communities.

Government needs to “engage with British Muslims”? Call the Muslim Council of Britain. One phone call. 3.9 million people “consulted.”

Except that the MCB doesn’t represent 3.9 million Muslims. Most Muslims aren’t members. Many disagree with them. The MCB is a self-appointed umbrella that claimed representative status, and institutions accepted it because it was convenient.

MEND does the same. Tell MAMA does the same. They position themselves as “the voice of British Muslims”, and institutions accept this because finding actual representative voices would require actual work.

Creates a dependency relationship:

Institution needs: Muslim consultation for diversity compliance. Organisation provides: Instant “community voice.” Institution gets: Ticked box, no effort required. Organisation gets: Institutional access, policy influence, and funding.

This is why organisations with documented extremism concerns maintain institutional access despite the government refusing direct engagement. Local authorities, universities, and police forces continue consulting MEND and MCB because they’re on the approved list and calling them is easier than genuine outreach.

Sikhs don’t have equivalent infrastructure. No Sikh organisation has positioned itself as “the voice of British Sikhs” with the same institutional penetration. When institutions need to consult, there’s no ready-made number.

Result: Muslim organisations get consulted by default. Sikh voices get excluded by institutional laziness.

Mechanism Three: Violence Calculations Nobody Admits.

This is the mechanism nobody says out loud. But everyone knows it’s true.

Christian groups protest? Institutions monitor them, and life continues.

Sikh groups protest? Institutions listen politely and make minor concessions.

Muslim groups protest? Institutions fundamentally change policy.

Why?

Because institutions calculate risk based on precedent. And the precedent is clear:

France, October 2020: Samuel Paty was beheaded for showing Charlie Hebdo cartoons in a lesson about free expression. Teacher. Murdered. For teaching.

France, January 2015: Charlie Hebdo massacre. Twelve dead for publishing cartoons. Not hate speech - just cartoons. The crime was a visual representation of Muhammad. The punishment was execution.

UK, March 2021: Batley Grammar School. The teacher shows a Charlie Hebdo cartoon in a religious studies lesson about blasphemy. Approved curriculum. Educational context. Muslims protest outside the school. Death threats. The teacher goes into hiding. Four years later: still hiding. New identity. PTSD. Suicidal ideation. Career destroyed. Life destroyed.

The school apologised before investigating. Union abandoned him. Police couldn’t guarantee safety. Dame Sara Khan’s review: institutions “totally and utterly failed” him.

UK, 1989-present: Salman Rushdie publishes “The Satanic Verses.” Fatwa issued. Decades in hiding. 2022: stabbed and nearly killed in New York. The fatwa never ended.

Netherlands, 2004: Theo van Gogh was murdered for making a film about Islam’s treatment of women. The killer left a note pinned to Van Gogh’s chest with a knife.

UK, 2005: 7/7 bombings. Fifty-two dead. 784 injured.

UK, 2013: Lee Rigby murdered outside barracks. Run over, then hacked to death. Killers wanted to be filmed explaining their Islamic motivation.

UK, 2017: Manchester Arena. Twenty-two dead, over a thousand injured. Targeted children at a pop concert.

I’m not listing these to suggest all Muslims are violent. Or most. Or many. The vast majority of British Muslims would never harm anyone and are horrified by these attacks.

I’m listing them because institutions calculate risk, and these are the precedents they’re calculating with.

When Christian groups protest LGBT curriculum, institutions know the outcome: angry letters, maybe protests, life continues.

When Muslim groups protested the LGBT curriculum in Birmingham in 2019, institutions knew different outcomes were possible. Batley Grammar. Samuel Paty. Charlie Hebdo.

So they calculated differently.

Birmingham schools suspended the lessons. The protesters won. Not because their arguments were more compelling, but because institutions calculated that the risk of continuing wasn’t worth it.

This is the elephant in the room. Nobody says it in polite company. But everyone makes decisions based on it.

The Sikh comparison proves it:

After 9/11 and 7/7, Sikhs suffered terrible violence. Targeted because attackers thought turbans meant terrorism. Balbir Singh Sodhi - first victim, murdered four days after 9/11 by someone who thought all turbans meant Taliban.

In Britain, after 7/7, the first target was a gurdwara in Kent. Not a mosque. Attackers assumed Sikhs equalled Muslims, equalled a threat.

Twenty-four years of “mistaken identity” violence. Beaten, turbans ripped off, told to go home, spat on.

But institutions don’t calculate the same risk with Sikh protests because there’s no precedent for Sikh violence in response to perceived religious offence.

The precedent is: Sikhs get attacked. They don’t attack back. They don’t issue death threats. They don’t force teachers into hiding. They don’t cause institutions to change policy out of fear.

Therefore, Institutions don’t accommodate Sikh concerns the same way.

This isn’t fair. It’s not right. It’s not how democracy should work. But it’s how risk calculation works.

Organisations that can signal potential violence - even if they never explicitly threaten it - get accommodation that peaceful organisations don’t.

Mechanism Four: Grieve as Establishment Validator

Electoral blackmail creates political pressure. Institutional laziness creates dependency. Violence calculation creates fear.

But none of that produces official policy. You can’t write “we’re afraid” as justification for adopting the APPG definition.

You need respectability. Credibility. Someone from the establishment saying, “This is reasonable and necessary.”

Enter Dominic Grieve.

If MEND proposed the definition directly, it’d be recognised as biased lobbying. “Organisation with extremism concerns wants to control speech about Islam.” Obviously rejected.

But when a former Attorney General examines the question “independently” and concludes that the definition is necessary? Now it’s respectable. Credible. The considered judgment of a serious legal mind.

Grieve’s role is laundering activist demands through establishment credentials.

He praised the APPG definition in 2018. Worked with MEND and MCB through Citizens UK. Cleared Islamic Relief despite antisemitic posts. Then, he was appointed to “independently examine” the definition he already endorsed, developed by organisations he already worked with.

His conclusion is predetermined. But his credentials make it legitimate.

This is the final mechanism: establishment validation transforms activist lobbying into official policy.

The first three create pressure. The fourth creates the permission structure.

What Sikh Representation Would Expose.

This is why Sikhs are excluded.

If Sikhs were on the Working Group, they’d ask: “Why are we being attacked?”

“Because people think you’re Muslim.”

“Why do people associate Muslims with violence?”

There’s the problem. That question leads to actual terrorist attacks, grooming gangs, theocratic governments threatening critics, and a teacher still hiding.

Sikhs would point out that the solution is addressing violence, not controlling speech. Protecting victims means confronting attackers, not silencing critics. You can’t solve “mistaken identity” violence by making it illegal to discuss why the mistaken identity is perceived as dangerous.

Those questions destroy the entire project.

The definition isn’t about protecting Sikhs from violence. It’s about preventing questions about where violence comes from.

Including Sikhs would surface those questions. So Sikhs are excluded.

524,000 people. Named as victims. Zero representation.

Not oversight. Necessity.

Institutional capture required their exclusion. If they’d been included, they’d have exposed the game.

Tomorrow: Part Four - Democratic Capture

What happens when all four mechanisms converge? How Starmer responded to violence threats, why Grieve was really chosen, and what the padlock actually locks.

The Working Group isn’t examining Islamophobia. It’s formalising the capture.