Labour would be smart to find Muslim allies aghast at the success of The Muslim Vote and clear in their opposition to organisations like MEND and the Muslim Association of Britain
July 12, 2024 11:08
The Labour landslide might have dominated headlines since 5 July but with five wins for independent candidates backed by the new organisation The Muslim Vote – and other near misses, including in Wes Streeting and Shabana Mahmood’s seats - the real slogan of the election wasn’t “Get the Tories out” but “From the river to the sea.”
In recent months there has been a huge rise in antisemitism across all metrics and on campus Jewish students have feared for their safety. I heard a lecturer argue that Israelis could not have been raped on October 7 as “the oppressor cannot be raped.”
The government must digest the words of Shabana Mahmoud – now the Justice Secretary - that “British politics must wake up to what happened.” Masked men burst into a community meeting she was holding, she told reporters. Deputy prime minister Angela Rayner has spoken of no longer being able to go out to visit friends without fearing for her own safety. And one of Jess Phillips’ campaigners was followed, filmed, screamed at and had her tyres slashed.
Calls for the annihilation of the Jewish state were recorded and proudly shared on social media and at campaign rallies.
Emboldened by its wins and already making plans for 2029, The Muslim Vote is here to stay. It describes itself as, “An unprecedented coming-together of Muslim organisations…a dynamic coalition.” Two key parts of that coalition are Mend and the Muslim Association of Britain. But while the specific organisation The Muslim Vote is new, it has been in the making here since the 1960s. As a driver of division and intolerance, The Muslim Vote is a Muslim Brotherhood dream made reality.
In that context we should look at its ideological roots, such as the founding of the Muslim Association of Britain by Kemal Helbawy, the former official spokesperson of the Muslim Brotherhood in the West. At one point Helbawy was responsible for all Brotherhood activities in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The outlawing of the organisation in Egypt and Saudi Arabia led him to flee to the UK and together with others he founded the Muslim Association of Britain. Anas Altikriti, founder of the Cordoba Foundation, former Vice President and Patron of Stop The War Coalition and former Chairman of the MAB, described it as, “The closest there is to the Muslim Brotherhood, and which espouses the basic tenets of the Muslim Brotherhood ideology”. In Barry Rubin’s ‘The Muslim Brotherhood: The Organization and Policies of a global Islamist movement’, Dave Rich describes the Muslim Association of Britain as having revolutionised political Islam’s role in the UK by “shifting it to a more anti-Western, anti-Israel and antisemitic outlook.”
Shockat Adam, who beat incumbent Labour MP Jonathan Ashworth in Leicester South, has been the chairman of Mend’s Leicester group. Ayoub Khan, who won Birmingham Perry Barr and beat the UK’s first ever Muslim MP, Khalid Mahmood, is a former LibDem councillor who resigned from the party in May after being told to undertake antisemitism awareness training after questioning the events of October 7. Adnan Hussain, the new MP for Blackburn, was filmed shouting to a large crowd of supporters at his final election rally: “We will raise our voice for Gaza! We will continue to fight, until death, inshallah!” Following his victory in Blackburn he was greeted with the usual chant of “From the river to the sea.” Iqbal Mohamed, now MP for Dewsbury, told his supporters at a rally a to “go home and find every brand and every product that has been supporting Israel and Zionism from the beginning of time and throw it away... Put the list on your fridge. Tell your children when you go to the shop to buy sweets ‘do not buy this’ and ‘do not buy that’. That is the least we can do.”
The Muslim Vote’s fixation on Palestine as Muslim-vs-Jew issue, its pledges to tackle teaching related to LGBT tolerance in schools and a pressure to act as a collective “ummah” are all part and parcel of the Brotherhood’s strategy for the West.
The task ahead for Labour will be discerning the bad actors from the good, as the Muslim Brotherhood – and The Muslim Vote - will lay claim to represent all Muslims and be quick to condemn those who don’t agree with them as “non-Muslim”, despite the majority of British Muslims saying repeatedly in polls that they are proud to be British.
It has become commonplace to demonise Zionism, equating the ideology to Nazism and depicting those who believe in the need for a Jewish state as bloodthirsty murderers. Given the huge numbers of Jews who consider themselves to be Zionists, antisemitism has been mainstreamed.
Labour needs to take stock and reflect on what has happened. There are plenty of research report recommendations left unmet, such as the adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism across schools, the teaching of antisemitism beyond history classes, and an assessment of whether universities are meeting their duty to implement Prevent and keep students safe from radicalisation.
When the Muslim Brotherhood wins, everyone else loses -especially the wide variety of Muslims living in Britain who want a free, equal and tolerant Britain. Labour would be smart to find Muslim allies aghast at the success of The Muslim Vote and clear in their opposition to organisations like MEND and the Muslim Association of Britain. A grasp of nuance, an understanding of the Muslim Brotherhood and an appreciation of our diverse and heterogeneous Muslim communities will all be paramount.
