Muslim Community in Wales

Geraint Davies Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Ms McVey, and I offer my warm congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Ruth Jones) and, of course, as-salaam alaikum. It is a great pleasure to represent a large Muslim community in Swansea West: the Muslim community in Swansea is largely in Swansea West. Incidentally, there is an issue around the Boundary Commission proposals that would split it in half, which I am hoping will be resolved. As is the case elsewhere, the Muslim community is largely of Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Arabic but also African descent, and indeed there are some white Muslims. We are very much a community of communities in Swansea, and the Muslim community provides public service in our hospitals and our schools. Muslims serve in retail, manufacturing and hospitality: it is an integrated environment, and we rejoice in our similarities as well as our differences.

As other speakers have mentioned, the pandemic disproportionately hit certain groups who perhaps had less money or more forward-facing jobs, or were more congested in accommodation. We therefore saw a differential outcome in terms of infections, which we should learn from in future. We also saw a differential impact in terms of educational opportunities, because people from Muslim backgrounds often may not have English as a first language: there is a digital divide there. Again, the Welsh Government took that issue up, trying to focus support on people who were less well off, which included the Muslim community. It should be said that the Muslim community do better than the average in terms of educational outcomes, both in higher and lower education, but they start from a position of less economic strength. Therefore, we had this differential problem.

I chair the all-party parliamentary group on speech and language difficulties, which obviously looks at all groups, and we found that people with difficulties with speech and language—those from poorer backgrounds in particular but also those who have English as a second language—have differentially suffered from the lockdowns. There needs to be focused support on catch-up in that respect.

Since 2010, the Government’s mantra has been austerity. Sadly, that has translated into a flatlining economy, and politically that can translate into more racism, as frankly the Brexit debate did. People who have very little money, as we see a growing cost of living crisis, suddenly want someone to blame, and sometimes that blame is focused on people who are different from them. We are, of course, talking about the racial discrimination that we see. As has been pointed out, half of all hate crimes are committed against the Muslim community.

I am pleased that in Swansea West we have the Ethnic Minorities and Youth Support Team. The organisation tries to avoid the extreme radicalisation of youth, whether they are from white backgrounds facing fascist radicalisation or, indeed, occasionally people who misunderstand the Islamic Scriptures and end up seeking a violent way forward. There are not a lot of examples in Swansea, partly because of the success of the Ethnic Minorities and Youth Support Team. I am pleased that its chief executive Rocio Cifuentes has been appointed the Children’s Commissioner for Wales, and will help those children who may not have had the greatest opportunity to start from.

Hon. Members will be aware that Prevent is a system that attempts to prevent the emergence and continuation of terrorism. I have found, from engagement with the programme with Muslim imams and others, that its intrinsic problem is that there is a preconception in Prevent that if someone has too much Islam—like drinking and so on—they become too Islamic and then they become a fundamentalist. That is not the truth. The truth is that people who become fundamentalists and ultimately cause damage in various ways do it through a corruption of the Scriptures of Islam. After all, hon. Members may know that Islam is Arabic for “peace”.

It is not about saying to people, “You’ve got too much Islam.” It is about having clerics and imams engaging with and talking to people who may, in the extreme, have adopted the corruption of Islam, such as Isis, and say, as has just been pointed out, “Actually, Islam is about peace, equality, fairness and living together in harmony.” That is an important point to get across. We all vividly remember the police officer who was killed outside the House of Commons. Sheikh Mohsen, an imam in Swansea, phoned me to express his sympathy and solidarity that we should be side-by-side as communities against any extremism, wherever it comes from and against whomever it is inflicted.

I am here to rejoice in Swansea as a city of sanctuary and in Wales as a nation of sanctuary for the Muslim community. Rather than suggestions of the Muslim community as some sort of victims, my experience is that they are very much part and parcel of the community, but they are also heroes of the moment. Mosques have come forward and provided food for people during the pandemic, as well as continuously doing so for homeless people and others. They have shown great leadership in doing so.

In particular, Mahaboob Basha, who I know personally, has done a lot on this issue and he got a medal from the Queen for his work. He is standing as a councillor, as it happens, and he stood, as did Riaz Hassan, in the Assembly elections. Aisha Iftikhar was another candidate in the past. There are a lot of people coming forward from the Muslim community to take up positions of public responsibility and who are giving back to the community and showing leadership. Today’s debate is a great opportunity to thank them, and to say that we stand together in solidarity in difficult times, we are stronger together than apart and we will not tolerate those who breed intolerance and hatred.

--- Later in debate ---

[David T. C. Davies]

We already have laws in place to protect people from discrimination or abuse, but people are breaking the law. That does not necessarily mean that the law is wrong or needs to be changed. Perhaps it needs to be enforced more, or perhaps the penalties need to be looked at. We need to be careful about any legislation that will have an impact on freedom of speech. I do not think that we can get to a point of equality and tolerance simply by saying to people that they are not allowed to express a view about something, be it be Palestine, Kashmir, the history of the crusades or whatever. Those are all things that people should be able to discuss.

[Geraint Davies]

Will the Minister give way?

[David T. C. Davies]

I do feel that I am getting slightly away from my responsibilities as a junior Minister in the Wales Office—I will probably get the sack tomorrow—but go on; I will take one more intervention.

[Geraint Davies]

I am sure that the Minister will accept that there are limits to freedom of speech. I am thinking in particular of the online incitement to racial hatred by groups that inspire hatred and division, such as Voice of Wales, which has been taken off YouTube and then came back on to it. Do we not need a balance between what is called freedom of speech and something that is damaging and corrupting to our society?

[David T. C. Davies]

I agree with the hon. Member: there are, and have to be, limits on freedom of speech in a civilised society. We cannot have people abusing it in order to incite violence or hatred against other groups, so in that sense, I agree.

I would like to bring this debate back to Wales and the Muslim community. I recognise that the Muslim community in Wales and elsewhere has faced intolerance and discrimination. In fact, that point was raised with me by the Ahmadiyya Muslims whom I met in Cardiff. They said to me that on occasion, when they have tried to get a taxi to their mosque, they were told by the driver that they would not be taken. The hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) will probably know what I am getting at here. All of us, especially those of us in Government, must say that we will never tolerate anti-Muslim hatred in any form, and will seek to stamp it out wherever it occurs.

We have supported Tell MAMA with just over £4 million between 2016 and 2022 to monitor and combat anti-Muslim hatred. We have a proud tradition of religious tolerance in the law, and we have committed to creating a strong and integrated society in which prejudice is not tolerated. People must always be free to express their religious identity and to live without fear of harassment and crime because of it. We launched the places of worship scheme, which is designed to reduce the risk and impact of hate crime at places of worship and associated faith community centres, and we have provided funding for protective security measures, such as CCTV, fencing and intruder alarms, to places of worship and associated faith community centres that are vulnerable to hate crime. Some 241 grants worth £5 million have been awarded to places of worship across England and Wales, 84 of which were awarded to mosques.

We in the Wales Office have supported the work of the UK Government in bringing people from Afghanistan to the United Kingdom, including to Wales. The hon. Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden), who has had to leave, would be able to describe being in touch with us in the Wales Office, and how our officials did everything they could to help in a small number of cases. Thousands of Afghans have supported NATO forces in Afghanistan in recent years, and we acknowledge the dangers posed to them and others as a result of the transition of power in that country. I am proud of the role that the UK Government have taken in supporting Afghan citizens, and the admittedly much smaller role that the Wales Office has played in supporting a few of those families. We will exceed our initial aim to resettle 5,000 people through the Afghan citizen resettlement scheme in the first year. In the four months since Operation Warm Welcome was launched, we have worked across 10 Government Departments, with devolved Administrations and with around 350 councils and local agencies, as well as with charities and volunteers.

I had slightly more time than I thought, but I have said most of what I want to say. In conclusion, this has been an example of the kind of positive debate we do not see enough of in the House of Commons. Broadly speaking, we are all basically in agreement. The hon. Member for Newport West began by talking about the enormous contribution that the Muslim community has made in Wales. She extolled the virtues of Newport. I absolutely agree with what she said.

All Members have spoken about the importance of making sure that Muslims in this country and in Wales do not face discrimination or hatred as a result of following their religion. I agree 100%, and am more than happy to work with any hon. Members in the House to that end. I make many visits to Wales. If any Members of Parliament from Wales wish to ensure that an invitation to another mosque comes to me—especially if food is involved—I am sure we will look very favourably on it.