Alwaght- More than 350 mosques and Muslim organizations in Britain have written to the ruling Conservative Party backing calls for a formal inquiry following a number of allegations of Islamophobia.
The calls mirror and endorse those made by the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), who wrote to the party last week urging a full audit to tackle the “more than weekly occurrences of Islamophobia from candidates and representatives of the party”.
Now 11 separate umbrella organizations from all over the UK including Wales, Belfast, Scotland and Manchester have backed the calls for an urgent inquiry after a dozen examples of Islamophobia from party members in a two-month period from April were revealed.
Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn leader of the opposition Labor Party has called for an inquiry into allegations of Islamophobia within the Conservative party.
The Labour leader backed calls for an investigation on Monday night after home secretary Sajid Javid rejected the proposition of an inquiry, which gained support from Conservative peer Sayeeda Warsi.
“I think if there are allegations made then an inquiry should be held and it should be addressed and it should be dealt with,” Corbyn told the Press Association at a west London mosque.
“Islamophobia, as with antisemitism, as with any other form of racism, has no place whatsoever in our society or in any of our political parties. Nobody should be condoning it, nobody should be hiding it, everybody should be exposing it.”
He highlighted reported rises of Islamophobic hate crimes, and added: “Let’s dedicate ourselves, during Ramadan, to say we will drive out Islamophobia from our society.”
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.
