The Muslim Council of Britain today has written to Conservative chair, Richard Holden after a week of inflammatory statements and Islamophobia from senior figures in the Party.
While the Muslim Council of Britain welcomes the withdrawal of the Conservative Party whip from Lee Anderson MP after he claimed the Mayor of London was controlled by ‘Islamists’, the Muslim Council of Britain insists that the Conservative Party must investigate the structural Islamophobia that persists in the party for many years.
On Anderson, the letter states that “we note that he was only censured for refusing to apologise, not for making the racist remarks in the first place. We also note that the whip was withdrawn only after there was widespread condemnation across the board, while the Prime Minister and the rest of the Cabinet remained silent.”
The request for an investigation into structural Islamophobia in the Conservative Party follows a previous dossier of 300 cases of Islamophobia in the party submitted by the MCB. Despite a poorly framed investigation to look into discrimination in 2022, this week of extremism in the Conservative Party demonstrates that discrimination against Muslims remains strong.
Writing to Mr Holden, Zara Mohammed, Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain said: “Our view is that the Islamophobia in the Party is institutional, tolerated by the leadership and seen as acceptable by great swathes of the party membership.”
“Leaders – especially those in politics – have the ability to shape the agenda and a narrative, and play a role in Islamophobic hate crime, which has recently trebled according to Tell Mama. These issues cannot – and must not – be ignored.”
The letter points to a week of extremism that includes:
* Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman stating in an article in The Daily Telegraph that “Islamists…are in charge” of Britain (a common conspiracy theory peddled by the far-right), and also expressed by Robert Jendrick in the House of Commons.
* Former Deputy Chairman Lee Anderson who said of Muslim Mayor Sadiq Khan: “I don’t actually believe that the Islamists have got control of our country, but what I do believe is they’ve got control of Khan, and they’ve got control of London.”
* Conservative Party donor Sir Paul Marshall endorsing incendiary tweets, including one stating: “Civil war is coming. There has never been a country that has remained peaceful with a sizeable Islamic presence”.
* Former Prime Minister Liz Truss sharing a platform with infamous far-right activist Steve Bannon and agreeing with Bannon’s assertion that convicted far-right activist and Islamophobe Tommy Robinson was a ‘hero’.
* These actions are not only reserved to this week. In recent months, we have had prospective Conservative Party parliamentary candidate and newspaper columnist Nick Timothy openly advocating discrimination against Muslims by demanding punitive measures that curtail religious rights and respond to far-right tropes about Muslims.
The letter can be found here: MCB Conservative Party
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