Alwaght- Britain's Conservative Party has been accused of failing to take the issue of Islamophobia seriously.
In a statement, the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) has called for an independent inquiry into the problem of Islamophobia within the Conservative Party. MCB noted that Islamophobia had “poisoned” sections of the party.
Conservative party officials insisted they were treating the issue seriously, but the MCB cited nine cases of anti-Islam sentiment from Tory politicians and candidates since April, calling it “the tip of the iceberg”.
Sayeeda Warsi, the party’s former chair, said she had spent more than two years trying and failing to get her successors and Theresa May to engage with the problem, and warned that the Tories faced a wider institutional problem of Islamophobia.
A letter to the Tory party chair, Brandon Lewis, from the head of the MCB, Harun Khan, called for a “genuinely independent inquiry”.
He listed two months of incidents involving members, including one who shared a message which called Muslims “parasites” and another who posted a photo of bacon hanging from a door handle with the caption “protect your house from terrorism”.
Khan questioned why no action had been taken against Bob Blackman, the Harrow East MP, after he re-tweeted an anti-Islam message from the hard-right activist Tommy Robinson, and hosted a hardline Hindu nationalist, Tapan Ghosh, in parliament.
Warsi said she backed the MCB’s call, adding that it was “a shame” that it could potentially require such a public rebuke for the Conservatives to start treating the subject with proper seriousness.
Labour MP Rupa Huq said the cumulative record of the Conservatives pointed to “the very definition of institutional racism - not merely bad apples, but a systematic leadership failure to address both personal prejudice and systemic unfairness”.
She said: “The Tories’ failure on Islamophobia is desperately disappointing. But for Britain’s Muslims it’s worse than that. If the people who claim to be leading this country are shirking their responsibility to protect all the communities living here, it sends an appalling message. It makes racists inside and outside their party think they can get away with it.”
