The Iraq war was supposed to have poisoned Labour's relations with British Muslims. Tony Blair's apparently unqualified support for a bellicose Republican administration despised around the Muslim world was deeply unpalatable. Years of anti-terror legislation were judged by some to have stigmatised Muslims and fanned Islamophobic flames. The government's attempt to outlaw religious hate speech was seen, by sceptics at least, as simply a desperate, ill-thought through peace offering with which they might woo disaffected Muslim supporters.
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