Show caption Illustration by Michael Driver Opinion Can’t talk about Muslims? It seems we do little else in the UK Nesrine Malik We’re told criticism of the religion is censored – but in reality it’s the right, not the left, that tries to gag any debate Tue 5 Sep 2017 01.00 EDT Share on Facebook

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There’s an awful lot we can’t talk about in Britain these days. We can’t talk about immigration, we can’t talk about gender, about race, and most of all we can’t talk about Muslims and Islam. We just can’t talk about the hijab or the niqab, and we certainly can’t talk about child abuse by men of Pakistani origin.

If you dare pipe up about any of these taboos you will be gagged, sacked and shunned. If you ask a question about immigration on BBC Question Time, for instance, a member of staff will rugby-tackle you and bundle you out of the studio. Politics, the media and polite society have become dominated by a powerful cabal, a liberal league that has so stifled debate for fear of offence that it has become an act of immense bravery to merely suggest that there is a religious or racial issue to any political or social problem.

This isn’t hyperbole, it is the parallel universe that many, including politicians and most of the British media establishment, inhabit.

Let’s take a quick glance at the news coverage over the past seven days. There have been three stories about Muslims and migrants, followed by their own noxious cloud of newspaper columns, radio phone-in shows and social media. The Labour MP Sarah Champion, who was forced off the Labour frontbench last month after writing a Sun column saying Britain “has a problem with British Pakistani men raping and exploiting white girls”, ramped up her thoughts in a Times interview, where she blamed “the floppy left” – who, she claims, shy away from tackling difficult issues because they fear being accused of racism.

In another case, newspapers reported claims over the case of a child placed in foster care with a Muslim family that allegedly imposed a Muslim way of life – although the original reports contained questionable details and provocatively worded extrapolations. When challenged on this story, the Times played what is now a sort of meta race-card, defending its position by stating that the objection to the investigation “is a kneejerk response that betrays a blind spot on the left”. Champion herself went full martyr and said she would “rather be called a racist than turn a blind eye to child abuse”.

And this weekend the Sunday Times published a story on its front page about how five-year-old girls are wearing hijab as school uniform. The article quoted the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, who said: “Personally, I am against the wearing of hijabs altogether.”

A listener could switch from a debate on the hijab on LBC, to Radio 4 discussing the foster care case

Following these stories, there have been phone-in shows, interviews and discussions on LBC, BBC Radio 4’s Today and BBC Newsnight, plus two columns in the Sun. Not to mention the Daily Mail, which sank even further than usual by grafting a niqab on to a stock photo to illustrate its own report on the foster-parenting story.

At one point on Monday, a listener could switch over from Nick Ferrari hosting a debate on the hijab on LBC, to Radio 4 discussing the foster care case. The conspiracy of silence runs deep in the British establishment.

To claim, in this climate, that any criticism of reports that are sometimes inaccurate or even entirely made up, is due to a liberal progressive consensus that muffles discussion, is little short of gaslighting. We talk about “it” – immigrants, Muslims, political correctness, the apparent assault on Judaeo-Christian Britain – all the time. It has become a national obsession, as British as tea and crumpets. Keep calm and carry on dog-whistling.

Not only is there little fire to justify all the smoke, there is now a deliberate confection on the part of politicians and journalists in order to make careers or attract attention. A fake controversy which, when exposed as lies or exaggeration, is rehashed as an attack on the left for trying to suppress free speech.

And where is this “left” that has such a vice-like grip on politics, the media and public debate? Certainly not in government, and certainly not recently enough in power to have left such a lasting impact. Even when the left was in government, New Labour’s overtures to the right were very much in evidence.

So where is this gagging left in the British media? Is it in the pages of the immigration- and Islam-obsessed Daily Mail? Is it in the tabloids? Is it in the pages of the respectable broadsheets like the Times and the Telegraph (the print edition of Allison Pearson’s column last week was headlined “I’m deeply uneasy about this Muslim foster family”)? Or in the BBC, which now largely acts as a referee providing a platform for false equivocation? Or maybe it is in our immigration-obsessed, Brexit-infected politics?

What we seemingly can’t talk about is anything that takes these issues away from race or religion. We can’t talk about how child abuse is also linked to class and economics, to the power of men over vulnerable children; we can’t talk about how cultural compatibility in foster care is informed, and yes also sometimes compromised, by practicalities such as ease of familial access.

The PC liberal censorship claim is a lie employed by the partisan, the cynical, the slow-witted and the xenophobic. If we don’t challenge it, their toxic agenda will seize control of our public debate.