LONDON — Should gender segregation be allowed in Muslim public meetings? That question has created a surprising degree of political heat in Britain in recent weeks.

The controversy began after a number of hard-line Muslim student groups insisted that men and women must sit separately at their public meetings and lectures. Universities UK, the official voice of British universities, deemed such segregation to be acceptable so long as women were not forced to sit at the back of the room. The guidance caused an uproar, drawing the prime minister, David Cameron, into the debate, and leading an opposition spokesman, Chuka Umunna, to insist that “a future Labour government would not allow or tolerate segregation in our universities.”

For some, the debate has been an expression of Islamophobia, singling out Muslim practices for criticism. For others, the attitude of Universities UK demonstrates how many in authority are willing to appease Islamist extremists, and to tolerate the intolerable so as not to offend minority groups.

It is true that many racists have seized on this controversy, as they have done with other issues, to foment hostility toward Muslims. But that only makes it more necessary for progressives to claim issues such as this, to bend them to progressive, rather than racist, purposes. To challenge specifically Islamic practices is not necessarily to be “Islamophobic.”