Britain’s top Muslim lobbying group has said that the next prime minister needs to seriously tackle the “systemic” Islamophobia in the Conservative Party after “an alarming radio silence” from Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is standing down on Sept. 5.
Zara Mohammed, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said that Johnson should have apologized to the Muslim community in his resignation speech last week, warning that there have been “no concrete steps” taken to deal with Islamophobia in the Tory party.
Mohammed told Metro.co.uk that the MCB had recorded more than 300 instances of Islamophobia in the party since 2019, adding that the next prime minister “must represent everybody and they have to make sure that they do that fairly.”
She said: “We’d like to see these new candidates actually take this issue seriously, because it is quite deep-seated.
Recent controversies in the party include Conservative MP Nusrat Ghani reporting that her “Muslimness” was raised when she was fired as transport minister.
Mark Spencer, MP, said that he spoke to Ghani, but rejected the accusations as “completely false and I consider them to be defamatory.”
A report into the situation is still unpublished six months after the alleged event, adding to the pressure that the party is facing following a 2021 review into Islamophobia in the Conservative Party, which found that anti-Muslim sentiment existed and criticizing the Tories for inadequately investigating allegations.
It did not find that the party was institutionally Islamophobic, a finding which the MCB and other groups slammed as a whitewash.
Sajid Javid, the former health secretary who dropped out of the race after the first ballot, attracted attention in the 2019 race for the leadership when he called for the independent investigation that concluded in 2021. But so far, no comments have been made on the issue in this year’s leadership elections.
