Islamophobia Awareness Month

Kirsten Oswald Excerpts

Wednesday 24th November 2021 Westminster Hall

[Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Dowd, and to participate in such an important debate secured by the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan). Those people who pay attention to the parliamentary calendar might notice that we had a debate quite recently on the definition of Islamophobia. We are debating a not dissimilar topic today, which is important and welcome. We need to be much more focused and relentless in looking at this issue, and this debate today is part of that. The recent high-profile cases of racism in cricket are just one example of why that really matters.

I am a member of the APPG on British Muslims, like a number of other hon. Members here today. The APPG is a good example of cross-party work, which is really important: collective purpose is absolutely necessary when we are dealing with Islamophobia, given the significant harm and detriment caused to so many people, some of which we have heard about today.

We have heard powerful speeches today from several hon. Members. My hon. Friend the Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Ms Qaisar) is a strong woman. I am proud to be her friend and colleague. What she had to say today was really important; I am grateful to her for saying what she did. Tackling Islamophobia absolutely requires us to listen to the lived experience of those who are affected. It is absolutely not on for those voices to be minimised in any way.

There are other people whose powerful work in this area is making a difference. We heard about Tell MAMA, which supports real change and works closely with the Community Security Trust. Joint working between Muslim and Jewish bodies is really important. It is a shame that such work is needed, but it is assuredly needed. From what some people might describe as low-level discrimination or harassment—presumably, those people have never experienced it themselves—to very serious crimes, the way that Islamophobia touches lives is broad and ever evolving. We heard from the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton about his worries for his grandchildren and the hon. Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan) talked about her own children. We heard about the online space, which is a bin fire of abuse and harassment, with anonymous trolls spreading bile and threatening people in a terrible way. The impact on women is greater, online as it is offline. This is not a straightforward issue, however, and it requires all of us to focus.

Somebody whose work we have heard about in this area—somebody who will deliver change—is Zara Mohammed, the new general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain. The call from the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) for the Minister to discuss with Zara is sensible. Zara is a young, Scottish woman on a mission to deliver real, positive change. She is absolutely committed to pressing for action to deal with Islamophobia and improving lives. Part of how we can do that is to be open and encourage dialogue, to make sure that people are focused together. She was good enough to spend some time recently with me and my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford), explaining the issues she is dealing with. I am grateful to her for that.

Of course, these issues reach far beyond this place. The hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton hosted some visitors earlier in the week, including Rahima Mahmut, whose work on behalf of the Uyghur Muslim community is so important. We owe her huge thanks.

It is also worth reflecting on the work that other groups are doing, including groups led by young people. In my local area, Kirsty Robson is a co-founder of Yet Again, a group of young people who work to prevent genocides such as that faced by the Uyghur Muslim population in China. There is the work of Never Again Right Now, another youth-led movement, spearheaded by the European Union of Jewish Students, including my colleague, Olaf Stando. It is international in membership, and calls out the treatment of those who suffer human rights abuses because of their religion. I note its campaign in support of Uyghur Muslims, calling for a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing games.

I mention those groups in particular because solidarity is important. Tackling Islamophobia is not something that only Muslims should have to deal with and it is not something that is the responsibility of Muslims. We need to be open, all of us, to the fact that it is an issue everywhere. I have heard some comments today that make me think that I need to emphasise that point. I live in a fantastically religiously diverse community. I live in a country where there is a lot of work going into delivering fairness and social justice and stamping out racism in all its forms, but we do not have a magic wand. We cannot wish away the reality that Islamophobia remains and is an issue in Scotland just as it is everywhere else. We need to be alive to that and we need to be willing to work hard to deal with it.

The Scottish Parliament has a cross-party group working hard on this issue. It has been working with Professor Peter Hopkins and his team from Newcastle University, has conducted an inquiry and has adopted the APPG definition of Islamophobia. As we have heard, all parties in the Scottish Parliament have agreed to do that.

We need to define Islamophobia; we need to be clear what we are talking about and what is unacceptable, and we cannot do that if we do not define it. We need to be confident in our language.

It is welcome that the Scottish Parliament has got to that place. I am really keen to hear from the Minister the UK Government’s plans to look at this again and push ahead with this. I do not think they should get to keep kicking this into the long grass, particularly given the Prime Minister’s past comments, which are indefensible. The tone of some comments from Government Members today is regrettable. That is not the way we should conduct ourselves in here. Some of the eye-rolling and the language used was most unfortunate. However, I have to say that the contributions from the hon. Members for Burnley (Antony Higginbotham) and for Wycombe (Mr Baker) were eloquent and welcome. We need to see and hear more from the UK Government on this. We need to be mindful of the broader environment that we are in: there is a changing climate across in the world. We have a part to play here, using the platforms that we have, in making sure that we make a difference, because there has been a surge in respect of how the Muslim community is treated.

I conclude by returning to something the Minister said, which others have reflected on. She said that this is not political, or should not be, but her comments were. We need to take a step back from some of that. We need to accept that this is an issue for all of us in this Chamber and across the House; we all have a responsibility and duty to deal with Islamophobia. We will do that better if we can have discussions without raising the temperature in the way that it was raised, regrettably, today. I hope the Minister has something positive to say on that.

[Peter Dowd (in the Chair)]

I want to give Afzal Khan two minutes to wind up the debate.