Islamophobia Awareness Month Debate
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Jamie Stone
Main Page: Jamie Stone (Liberal Democrat - Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross)Department Debates - View all Jamie Stone's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
Islamophobia Awareness Month
Jamie Stone Excerpts(3 years ago)
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Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I congratulate the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) on securing this important debate.
It is ironic that when we consider the word “Islamophobia”, we think about the word “Islam”. “Islam” means “peace”. “Salaam alaikum” means “peace be unto you”, and “Alaikum salaam”—the reply—means “unto you be peace”. It is deeply ironic that, as the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) said, we have the evil of Islamophobia out there. I, too, have seen some very ugly stuff that I never want to see again. Islamophobia exists.
In the short time available, I want to tell an anecdote. As a student, I was fishing about for a subject to make up my degree, and one of the subjects I chose, by great good fortune, was the history of Islam and Islamic culture. That was one of the best things that I ever did, because I learned everything about the life of the Prophet. I learned about the Hegira in 622. I learned about the Umayyads, the Abbasids, the hadith literature—I was talking to the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton about this earlier today—the sunnah of the Prophet, and so on. In doing so, we met Muslims. They came to lectures. We worked with them. We ate with them and learned about food. It is a very simple thing, but when you know somebody and you like them, it is hard to hate them. I was very fortunate with my education. I think that we can build into education in the future a greater understanding of Islam, Judaism and other religions, which will make for a more tolerant society.
One of the things that came out of my lectures was the expression that we all know—that we are all the sons and daughters of Abraham. The similarities between Christianity, Judaism and Islam are there to be seen, and they are strengths that we should build on together. Wherever we are today as a nation, we will have to play to our strengths and really work together. It is a difficult world for us. That means mobilising everyone of all creeds and religions in this country. Therefore, stamping out something like Islamophobia can only help to build a better country for all of us.
Peter Dowd (in the Chair)
I may have to drop the time limit to two minutes because of all the interventions. I did alert colleagues to that. For the moment, however, I call Anum Qaisar, who has two and a half minutes.