Islamophobia Awareness Month Debate
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Rachel Hopkins
Main Page: Rachel Hopkins (Labour - Luton South)Department Debates - View all Rachel Hopkins's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
Islamophobia Awareness Month
Rachel Hopkins Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Dowd. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) on securing this important debate during Islamophobia Awareness Month.
I speak as a humanist and as vice-chair of the showing racism the red card all-party parliamentary group. I want a tolerant society in which we collectively advocate for people’s freedom to practise their faith or belief so that everyone may live in a fair and equal society without discrimination. Religious education and anti-racist education play important parts in that.
Being born and bred in Luton, my home town, I am proud to represent Luton South, including our significant and vibrant Muslim community. Luton’s hyper-diversity and the contribution of all faith and belief groups is our strength. We have to use our strong community cohesion to stand against all forms of discrimination and racism. As the hon. Member for Burnley (Antony Higginbotham) said, the scourge of Islamophobia has no place in society.
Conspiracy theories and tropes perpetuated by the far right seek to dismantle that community cohesion to threaten the safety of Muslims across Luton, the UK and the world. As we have heard, British Muslims are victims of the highest proportion of religiously motivated hate crimes. The Home Office hate crime statistics for 2020-21 show that 45% of religious hate crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales were against Muslims, with 22% of crimes targeted at Jewish victims and 9% at Christians, while 16% of offences were unknown.
Excellent organisations such as the Muslim Council of Britain, MEND—Muslim Engagement and Development —and Tell MAMA support and empower British Muslims. This year’s Islamophobia Awareness Month theme is “Time for Change”. As other hon. Members have said, it is an apt time for the Conservative party to change its approach by conducting a genuinely independent investigation of Islamophobia in the UK, engaging with the British Muslim community to root out Islamophobia wherever it occurs and accepting the definition of Islamophobia of the all-party parliamentary group on British Muslims. I look forward to hearing what plans the Minister has in place for Islamophobia Awareness Month.