Police officers lectured about Nigel Farage and Robert Jenrick during publicly funded Islamophobia talk

Max Thompson, Campaigns Officer

29 September 2026

Officers from North Yorkshire Police have been lectured about senior Reform UK figures, including Nigel Farage, Robert Jenrick, Suella Braverman and Matt Goodwin, during a publicly funded Islamophobia training session.

During the hate crime training session, police officers were told to consider the comments and opinions of the Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, particularly his views on whether young Muslims are able to subscribe to British values. These were compared to a racially aggravated offence.

The Telegraph revealed that officers were asked to consider the "harm" done by Nigel Farage, and told that, had he made similar comments about members of the Jewish population, he would be "locked up".

The lecture formed part of a training programme called "Project Unity", which has also been delivered to students, council staff, and civil servants working on the Government's counter-extremism programme, Prevent.

The session also took issue with criticism from other senior Reform UK figures, singling out Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick for describing the pro-Palestine protests in London as "hate marches". Instead, the lecture sought to push the line that these marches were "protesting genocide".

The lecture further took issue with Matt Goodwin, the GB News presenter, author and Reform UK's candidate at the Gorton and Denton by-election, over the concerns he has raised about Muslim integration.

This news comes hot on the heels of another troubling story. Last week, the think tank Policy Exchange reported that the National Association of Muslim Police had published papers defending Hamas and describing the term "Islamist" as Islamophobic.

The training session was delivered by Abbas Najib, a former police officer who is now Chief Executive of the charity Better Communities Bradford. The charity has received £490,000 from the National Lottery Community Fund since 2019, including a £35,000 grant to roll out Project Unity. Other sessions offered by the programme include "media and political narratives" and "myths and misconceptions about Islam".

A creeping blasphemy law

The institutional capture of our police and other public bodies is undermining confidence in the organisations trusted to keep us safe. This has been made worse by the Government's introduction of a non-statutory official definition of Islamophobia, repackaged as "anti-Muslim hostility", which has already been weaponised against people, including senior politicians, who legitimately question, criticise, challenge, debate or mock Islam. This is unacceptable given that Parliament voted to abolish blasphemy laws in 2008.

There are now so many cases that it is almost undeniable: the Government, police and courts appear hell-bent on imposing a de facto Islamic blasphemy law on Britain.

Earlier in the summer, the Free Speech Union took on South Wales Police after the force implemented its own gold-plated version of the Islamophobia definition, under which officers were instructed to record any incident that went beyond "legitimate" criticism of Islam. In a country that abolished its blasphemy laws eighteen years ago, it is obscene that the police think they should have the power to decide what speech about Islam and Muslims is "legitimate".

The Free Speech Union threatened South Wales Police with a judicial review should it not immediately withdraw the guidance, and the force duly paused it.

Look at two of the cases the Free Speech Union has taken on. There was Hamit Coskun, who was charged with a religiously aggravated public order offence after he burnt a copy of the Quran outside the Turkish Consulate in London, in a peaceful protest against what he perceives as the Islamification of his home country of Turkey. He was slashed at by a passer-by who never had to spend time in jail. With the support of the Free Speech Union, he had his conviction overturned at Southwark Crown Court, where Mr Justice Bennathan ruled that freedom of expression "must include the right to express views that offend, shock or disturb". But then the Crown Prosecution Service ruthlessly pursued him again, seeking to have Mr Justice Bennathan's decision overturned in the High Court. Thanks to our efforts, the CPS's case was thrown out.

A more recent example is that of Stephen Gray, a former police officer of twenty-seven years. He had two police officers turn up at his door, and was found guilty by a district judge of sending a "grossly offensive" message, an offence under section 127 of the Communications Act 2003, for a joke about Islam that he reshared on Facebook.

The joke in question was an image of a man in a turban and a rasher of bacon, with the accompanying text: "Fun facts about Bacon! People who eat bacon have a lower chance of marrying a 9-year-old!"

It was clearly a joke in reference to the Prophet Muhammad's marriage to Aisha, who was just six, and the consummation of that marriage when she was just nine. It was a joke but, as Stephen said in court in April, one that sought to highlight a more serious point about the appalling practice of child marriage, which is still occurring today.

Stephen now has a criminal record and was forced to pay £1,100.

The Free Speech Union is proud to be supporting Stephen's appeal against his conviction, and has set up a fundraiser to help him clear his name. There is no such thing as a blasphemy law in Britain today. As Stephen has rightly highlighted on several occasions, including when he appeared on the FSU Podcast, had he made a joke about the Catholic Church, he would undoubtedly not have faced the same treatment.

The charity's defence

Speaking about the training programme, and defending the need for training on Islamophobia and on tackling misconceptions about Islam, Mr Najib said:

"Project Unity exists to reduce anti-Muslim hostility and strengthen trust between communities. We work with as wide a range of groups and organisations as possible, from councils and police to colleges, charities and community groups, to help them understand how prejudice takes hold and how public language can feed it.

"Statements made on national platforms reach millions, so the workshop looks closely at the words themselves and how they land.

"Participants consider how the same words would be heard if they were said about Jewish people, black people or any other minority community, so that one standard is applied to everyone, whoever is speaking and whatever their politics.

"That same standard means we challenge generalisations wherever they appear, including the labelling of voters as racist. As a charity, our role is to bring people together, not to take political sides.

"Since the riots of 2024, more organisations have recognised the need to address anti-Muslim hostility and build trust within communities. The training delivered through Project Unity is one of the ways we help them meet that need."

There is no doubt that this sort of programme to "tackle misconceptions" about Islam fits very conveniently with the current Government's agenda of tackling so-called "misinformation".

At a time when public confidence in policing has been damaged by concerns about the misapplication of the law and two-tier policing, this will only make matters worse.

Read more in The Telegraph.