The relationship between British Muslims and Labour is at breaking point

How should the party respond?

Is the relationship between the Labour Party and the Muslim community at breaking point? According to a survey by the Labour Muslim Network and reported by LabourList, the answer is yes. But you wouldn’t expect the answer to be anything other than that, would you?

Following October 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists murdered, raped and tortured 1300 innocent Israelis and kidnapped another 250, the fractures in the Labour Party have been increasingly evident, as has been the leadership’s cynical and craven response to electoral pressures from Muslims. Now the Labour Muslim Network (MLN) has helpfully quantified the degree to which Muslim councillors and MPs are unhappy with the party and its policies – specifically Gaza, inevitably – but also the way the party and its leaders are perceived to treat Muslim colleagues. According to LabourList, the report

found that more than half (53%) of Muslim Labour representatives believe the party does not take Islamophobia seriously.

It also found that two thirds (66%) of Muslim representatives say they are not treated equally compared to other representatives, one in three (38%) describe the party as institutionally Islamophobic.

The survey found that the Palestine-Israel conflict was a major wedge between the government and Muslim representatives, with 82% judging Keir Starmer’s handling of the Gaza crisis since October 2023 as fairly bad or very bad.

A further three quarters (77%) support suspending all UK arms exports to Israel, and 84% support implementing sanctions against it.

Almost all (97%) back immediate recognition for the State of Palestine.

Let’s take each finding in turn:

53 per cent of Muslim Labour representatives believe the party does not take Islamophobia seriously. It would be interesting to know if the survey unearthed specific examples of how the party is failing to tackle Islamophobia, which in itself is a difficult word to define. Taken literally, Islamophobia is not racism but rather a negative attitude towards Islam as a religion. And there are certainly many in the UK who object in the strongest term to various tenets of Islam, just as many criticise some principles of the other major religions. But the party itself has been excruciatingly careful to bend over backwards to avoid any criticism of Islam, and has even shown a reluctance to criticise Islamism itself. Back in 2013, when I was still in parliament, I wrote an article for the Telegraph in frustration at MPs’ response to the savage murder of Drummer Lee Rigby by two Islamists. You would have thought that the biggest outrage arising from this public execution of a serving British soldier was Islamophobia. You can read the article here.