Britain’s Labour government is defining Islamophobia in law. Not, it rushes to assure everyone, that there will be the slightest risk to free speech. All it is doing is codifying guidelines.

Well, it took all of 45 minutes after the publication of the new definition for an MP to demand that it be used to silence his critics. Iqbal Mohamed, elected as a “pro-Gaza independent,” wanted “sanctions” against the “escalating hostility” of what MPs said about Muslims.

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The Labour minister who responded to his intervention should have repeated the official line: No threat to free speech. Instead, he sonorously told the House of Commons that Mohamed had been “right to point to the huge concern we should all share about the unacceptable level of hostility and abuse directed at Muslims.”

That is the problem with these codes. Contrary to what is widely believed in the United States, hardly anyone in Britain is prosecuted, let alone convicted, for saying nasty things. The problem, rather, is that woke guidelines encourage local authorities, schools, police forces and the rest of........

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