Tory Muslim peer receives ‘vile Islamophobic emails’ after calling for Boris Johnson to be kicked out – proving racism in the party?
Boris Johnson: All he wanted was publicity – and like gullible idiotrs, we gave it to him.
This Writer suggested – only two days ago – that Boris Johnson’s “joke” about burqa-wearing Muslim women was garnering support for him among racists.
It seems I was correct.
Of course we should not take anything a politician says at face value – Ruth Smeeth claimed to have received 25,000 anti-Semitic messages via social media, 20,000 of them in 12 hours. But research by Jewish organisation the Community Security Trust showed a peak of only 200 such messages, nationally, per day at the time of the alleged abuse, suggesting that she was… exaggerating.
And Mr Johnson?
He won’t care what Lord Sheikh says. Nor will he care about any disciplinary action by the Conservative Party.
He probably thinks, as other commentators do, that Theresa May will not want to upset supporters of Mr Johnson before crucial Brexit votes in the autumn.
So what has he achieved with his “joke”?
Publicity – for himself. And that is all he wanted.
Conservative Muslim forum founder, Lord Sheikh, has said he has received dozens of “vile” Islamophobic emails after calling for Boris Johnson to be removed from the Conservative Party after his remarks about niqabs.
The Tory peer said the ex-foreign secretary had also “let the genie out of the bottle” after he suggested veiled Muslim women resembled “letter boxes” and “bank robbers”.
He told BBC Newsnight he had received the “vile“ emails, with “obscene language” since calling for the Conservatives to withdraw the whip from Mr Johnson.
His remarks came after the Conservative Party’s decision to consider disciplinary proceedings against Mr Johnson – a move that has led to criticism of Theresa May from Brexiteer MPs who claim the complaints are politically driven.
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I do not condone, in any way, the actions of those persons who subjected £ord Sheikh to such vile abuse however I do believe that it is the child, in part, at least, of conflation; word of the decade. For too long, our Media have been conflating race with faith, or religion, when it comes to Muslims. Muslim is NOT a race and Mr. Johnson’s comments, however ill advised, insulting, demeaning, derisory, insensitive and inappropriate were neither Islamophobic, nor racist and by labelling them thus, particularly when taken out of context, has given ammunition to those who tolerate difference and those who are wholly opposed; note, there is a difference between tolerance and acceptance.
Whatever assumptions are made about Mr. Johnson’s reasons, he did not mock Islam, nor any race (on this occasion). The subject of his criticism was the garment, which for many is “what you see as a bizarre and unattractive adornment.” How was he critical of Islam? Muslims, themselves, have said, publicly, that both the burqa and the niqab are not Islamic, not that certain bigots would make such a distinction however many people will fail to see any Islamophobia and be ired by the accusation. Remember certain examples in the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of anti-Semitism?
We must be careful about what we label hate speech, lest we lose sight of the actual offences. True, some people were offended, mostly by what was reported in the Media, not by the actual content of the article (Remember Ken £ivingstone’s interview with Vanessa) but some Muslim women, in particular, were not and in fact support Mr. Johnson and have used similar, or harsher descriptors of the burqa AND the niqab. Far worse is said about Catholics and Catholicism yet I don’t hear any calls for expulsions, apologies, or otherwise.
As somebody who has had to deal with racism for most of my life I get very worried when everything is attributed to racism. Stephen £awrence wasn’t killed because of what he was wearing, or what he believed in, or the choices that he made; he was killed because he was alive. Aye, that is the extreme end but my point is that racism has absolutely nothing to do with what the victim does, or does not do; they simply have to exist.