This week, the Muslim Council of Britain – of which I am assistant secretary general – wrote to the Conservative chair, Brandon Lewis, detailing the many incidents of unchecked Islamophobia within his party. The MCB chose its words carefully, explicitly refraining from calling the party inherently Islamophobic. But the letter did call for an independent inquiry into Islamophobia so that the Conservatives could acknowledge the problem and find ways to fix it.
As chairman, Lewis is the person who could make a difference. But in recent weeks, he and the party’s deputy chair, James Cleverly, have played down Islamophobia among Conservatives despite the wealth of evidence to the contrary.
.... One MP, Bob Blackman, shared an anti-Muslim tweet from the far-right activist Tommy Robinson in 2016, though he claims it was an “error”. He also hosted a hardline anti-Muslim Hindu nationalist in parliament. He was also a member of Islamophobic Facebook groups including Britain for the British. [Guardian Cif] Read more
