British Muslims are being demonised for voting

There was much that was pre­dictable about this month’s local and may­oral elec­tion results: the usu­al delib­er­a­tion about win­ners and losers, dis­sec­tion of swings and mar­gins, and hand wring­ing about apa­thy and turnout. But there was one sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence — - Mus­lim vot­ers became a crit­i­cal focus for post-elec­tion analy­sis. In the weeks since, Mus­lim peo­ple have been rep­re­sent­ed as a dan­ger­ous inter­nal ene­my, manip­u­lat­ing the priv­i­leges of British democ­ra­cy to sat­is­fy their egre­gious ambi­tions that sit fun­da­men­tal­ly at odds with the tra­di­tions of British soci­ety and val­ues. For many of us in Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ties, the rise of Islam­o­pho­bia has reached an intol­er­a­ble cacoph­o­ny. Yet those across the polit­i­cal spec­trum would seem to deny it is hap­pen­ing at all.

Even before final results were declared, one Labour Par­ty source in the Mid­lands was report­ed as say­ing that the par­ty would lose the May­oral con­test as a result of the ​‘Mid­dle East, not West Mid­lands’ — a dis­parag­ing ref­er­ence to Labour Mus­lim vot­ers who were brand­ed as hav­ing inap­pro­pri­ate loy­al­ties to Pales­tini­ans in Gaza, rather than their con­stituen­cy in the UK. Though quick­ly con­demned by Labour HQ sources, the com­ment is not dis­sim­i­lar in sen­ti­ment to anoth­er episode ear­li­er in the year, when a senior Labour source talked about ​‘shak­ing off the fleas’ when dis­miss­ing the res­ig­na­tion of dozens of local coun­cil­lors in protest at the party’s then fail­ure to call for a ceasefire.

There is no deny­ing that many Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ties have been dis­mayed at the ongo­ing vio­lence in Gaza, and that there has been active mobil­i­sa­tion around the issues. Indeed, this is like­ly a sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor in Labour’s share of the vote in local coun­cil wards where Mus­lim peo­ple make up more than one in five res­i­dents, being down by 21%. But sup­port for a cease­fire is not an anom­alous inter­est, and polls have con­sis­tent­ly shown that it is both Labour and the Con­ser­v­a­tive par­ty who have been out of step with the major­i­ty of the gen­er­al pub­lic, who have also favoured a cease­fire and a ban on arms sales to Israel. Mus­lim vot­ers have used their first elec­toral oppor­tu­ni­ty to express this dis­sat­is­fac­tion — using the bal­lot box to send a mes­sage to nation­al par­ties about their polit­i­cal pref­er­ences. This type of tac­ti­cal vot­ing is solid­ly with­in British demo­c­ra­t­ic tra­di­tion. But rather than acknowl­edge the wide­ly shared griev­ance that was artic­u­lat­ed through peace­ful demo­c­ra­t­ic chan­nels, it has been twist­ed and triv­i­alised into con­fir­ma­tion of Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty dis­loy­al­ty. This sits firm­ly with­in the racialised and reduc­tive terms of Nor­man Tebbit’s crick­et test, which sug­gest­ed that British South Asians’ loy­al­ty to the UK could be deter­mined by whether they sup­port­ed England’s crick­et team.

In the days after, cam­paign­ing group called Mus­lim Vote pre­sent­ed Labour leader Keir Starmer with a list of demands to regain the sup­port lost over the party’s posi­tion on Gaza. This list has been referred to as con­fir­ma­tion of an emerg­ing ​‘Islam­ic sec­tar­i­an pol­i­tics in the main­stream’ and ​‘an extra­or­di­nary list of 18 ​‘dan­ger­ous’ demands’, while for­mer Con­ser­v­a­tive par­ty leader Iain Dun­can Smith described it as ​‘a threat to our democ­ra­cy’, sug­gest­ing this ​‘amounts to noth­ing more or less than polit­i­cal black­mail’. We have also seen an increas­ing­ly embold­ened right wing press drench­ing them­selves in the oth­er clas­sic pil­lar of British elite racism — seiz­ing upon Pow­ellite rhetoric to exclaim that mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism has ​‘cre­at­ed a mon­ster’ and describ­ing the white York­shire man as an ​‘endan­gered species’.

If we place this elec­tion post-mortem with­in the wider con­text of the way that peace march­es over the last few months have been char­ac­terised, there is a clear and dis­tinct pat­tern of demon­is­ing Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ties and fram­ing them as out­siders, sim­ply for oper­at­ing with­in the legit­i­mate and pre­scribed chan­nels of polit­i­cal par­tic­i­pa­tion. Mus­lim peo­ple have been amongst hun­dreds of thou­sands oth­ers who have marched local­ly and nation­al­ly, and over­whelm­ing­ly peace­ful­ly, call­ing for a cease­fire. Those march­es have been sub­ject to vicious attacks by senior politi­cians such as for­mer Home Sec­re­tary Suel­la Braver­man, who described them as ​‘hate march­es’, and for­mer Home Office min­is­ter, Robert Jen­rick who referred to peo­ple par­tic­i­pat­ing as ​‘Islamist extrem­ists’. This has become typ­i­cal of the way that Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ties are held to dou­ble and incon­sis­tent stan­dards. Indeed, while exhort­ed to sub­scribe to ​‘British val­ues’ — when Mus­lim peo­ple avail them­selves of those social goods such as the right to express their griev­ance through a vote placed at a bal­lot box or by exer­cis­ing their right to protest, they are vil­i­fied as van­dals of that very sys­tem. It is extra­or­di­nary that express­ing con­cern at events that have been inter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised as hav­ing plau­si­ble risk of geno­cide and a pop­u­la­tion being on the brink of a man-made famine, has been so effec­tive­ly car­i­ca­tured as dan­ger­ous, sim­ply by mak­ing the asso­ci­a­tion with it being a Mus­lim extrem­ist interest.

Those same British val­ues were used with pun­ish­ing effect just last month when the High Court upheld Michaela School’s ban on prayer, firm­ly defin­ing the five minute prac­tice of qui­et prayer as an act of deviance and out­side the val­ues of the school (and nation­al) com­mu­ni­ty. Mean­while, as the inter­im CEO of a racial jus­tice char­i­ty, I am con­tin­u­al­ly shocked by the amount of vit­ri­olic online harass­ment we expe­ri­ence when speak­ing out about Islam­o­pho­bia. This all shows just how nor­malised Islam­o­pho­bia has become in our soci­ety, which will like­ly esca­late fur­ther as we approach an expect­ed election.

Treat­ing Mus­lim vot­ers and the legit­i­mate expres­sion of their inter­ests as a dan­ger and threat to British democ­ra­cy is a deeply harm­ful exer­cise that under­mines the very fab­ric of the infra­struc­tures that allow com­plex soci­eties to func­tion. Democ­ra­cy is the vehi­cle through which we can express dis­sent and dis­agree­ment, turn­ing them into polit­i­cal action and even­tu­al­ly find­ing solu­tions. Reduc­ing the dis­cus­sion around these local and may­oral elec­tions results to foes and vil­lains based on Islam­o­pho­bic tropes makes UK democ­ra­cy a play­ground for racist pol­i­tics. We can and must be bet­ter than that.

Dr Shab­na Begum is the inter­im CEO of the Run­nymede Trust.

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