Islamophobia Awareness Month

Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts

Wednesday 24th November 2021 Westminster Hall

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) for securing the debate during Islamophobia Awareness Month.

I want to set something straight on the record. Bolton South East does not need the help of other MPs to deal with the issues of taxi drivers. I deal with them, meet them regularly and do not need to set up an APPG for them. I am interested to know why no Conservative MP in Greater Manchester ever wants to join an APPG on Greater Manchester, which is much wider. No Conservative MPs will join that. That was rather a silly comment from the hon. Member for Bury North (James Daly) in making that point. To repeat, my taxi drivers do not need any help from anyone else.

Returning to the topic of the day, I want to talk about international Islamophobia. In Myanmar, decades of hate speech and persecution culminated in 2017 with more than 700,000 predominantly Muslim Rohingya people having to flee to neighbouring Bangladesh after a vicious campaign of ethnic cleansing; and our Government did nothing about it. In China, close to a million Uyghur Muslims are believed to be interned in so-called re-education camps. There, too, Islamophobia is rife across the country and our Government have done nothing about it.

In India, with every passing year, Islamophobia has become more normalised and mainstream. Narendra Modi was a member of the RSS, a neo-Nazi group, and his Bharatiya Janata party is making India into an authoritarian, Hindu national state. Regular, unprovoked attacks on Muslims by Hindu mobs have become routine in India, along with the destruction of mosques and the taking away of Muslims’ human rights.

Last month, the BBC reported that a video had gone viral on social media showing a terrified girl clinging to her Muslim father as Hindu mobs assaulted him. That is not a one-off. That kind of violence is overwhelming. I have never heard a word from the Foreign Office or Government Ministers on that issue. When they talk about wanting to deal with Islamophobia, I would like to hear from the Government.

In Europe, Muslims are being made the other. Constantly in France and other countries, every time there is a general election, they bring up the subject of Muslims, take women’s veils and bring in new laws that say that Muslims are forming a counter-society. Again, we hear nothing in this country from the Foreign Office. I would like our Government to do something about that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kemi Badenoch]

It is shameful that Muslims can still face verbal or physical attacks and are made to feel like outsiders in their own country. Political parties are granted a rare standing in public life, and it is our job as politicians to demonstrate leadership and set an example for others to follow in everything we do, from our public discourse to our constituency surgeries.

To that end, it was incredibly disappointing that the hon. Members for Manchester, Gorton and for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) used their speeches to attack William Shawcross with defamatory remarks that would be actionable if made outside this Chamber. William Shawcross is an outstanding public servant, as is Trevor Phillips, who the shadow Minister mentioned.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

On a point of order, Mr Dowd. I do not make this point of order flippantly. The Minister has just said that Mr Shawcross is a great man and she started her speech by using a trope about Muslims and terrorism, yet she is meant to be talking about Islamophobia. Shawcross has said that the Muslim faith is a fascist faith. How can she say that he is a person to lead a review that impacts on Muslims?

[Peter Dowd (in the Chair)]

You know that is not a point of order. Carry on, Minister.