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EHRC receives hand-delivered request from British Muslims to investigate Tory Islamophobia.

EHRC receives hand-delivered request from British Muslims to investigate Tory Islamophobia.

Categories: Press Releases

Tuesday December 10 2019

  • Shocking levels of Islamophobia within the Conservative Party have been revealed in a new report from Muslim Engagement and Development (MEND).
  • The report uncovers over 120 incidents of Islamophobia that have come to light in the last five years and which have emanated from over 60 conservative members of Parliament, councillors, and party candidates.
  • Individuals include the current Prime Minister, Mr Boris Johnson, and several members of the cabinet.
  • The Equalities and Human Rights Commission have been formally requested to use its statutory powers to initiate an immediate independent inquiry into Islamophobia within the Conservative Party.

Shazad Amin, CEO of MEND, says:

We have produced this report in an effort to highlight the pervasiveness of Islamophobia within the party. We are dismayed by increasing levels of populist rhetoric become normalised by outspoken politicians, and with political parties continuing to tolerate, support, or propagate inflammatory language whilst failing to tackle prejudice within their ranks

We believe that sufficient time has now passed for the Conservative Party to take this problem seriously, and sadly it has not. As such, in the light of this report, are asking the Equality and Human Rights Commission to use its statutory powers to initiate an immediate Independent Inquiry into Islamophobia within the Conservative Party.”

Read the report here

Read the letter here

Incidents include:

  • Boris Johnson: Compared Muslim women to ‘letter-boxes’ and ‘bank robbers’.
  • Bob Blackman: Invited a prominent anti-Muslim extremist, Mr. Tapan Ghosh to Parliament. Mr. Ghosh is a far-right Indian Hindu-nationalist, who has supported the genocide of Rohingya Muslims in Burma; called upon the United Nations to control the birth rate of Muslims; and suggested that Muslims should be forced to renounce Islam if they migrate to Western countries.
  • Damian Green: Received a letter complaining about “The excessive Muslim birth-rate” and comparing Islam to Nazism. Instead of rejecting this Islamophobia, Mr Green thanked him (!) and assured him that “the Government takes the threat of extremism very seriously.”
  • Michael Gove: Architect of the Government response to the ‘Trojan Horse’ affair, in which there was no ‘islamist plot’ regarding some schools in Birmingham
  • Jacob Rees-Mogg: Retweeted the leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) Party. The AfD recently ran an “Islam-free” campaign reminiscent of Nazi rhetoric, including calling for “Islam-free schools.”
  • Nadine Dorries: In response to a tweet by the Mayor of London, Mr. Sadiq Khan, which contained a video of him sharing Islamophobic hate speech that had been directed to him, Ms. Dorries tweeted: “How about, ‘it’s time to act on sex abusing grooming gangs,’ instead?”
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