A reflection on Islamophobia in the Labour Party. With a focus on a response to the Forde Report, on whether it is necessary for Labour to select ‘Hijabi’ or bearded men as candidates.
PS. For those who have not seen Jordan Peele’s film, ‘Get Out!’ there is a video explainer at the bottom of the blog.
Just another day as a Muslim in the Labour Party…
“By The Way, I Would Have Voted For Obama For A Third Term, If I Could.”
‘Get Out’ – Jordan Peele
Being a Muslim member of the Labour Party is like sometimes being in a social thriller. With myself sometimes taking centre stage, thankfully with a good ending. Added to that is being a member of the Tower Hamlets Labour Party, a mixture of a social thriller and the twilight zone, both in the past and present. Some of us in the local party collectively call ‘WTF episodes’.
It has been a tough time to be a Muslim in Britain. The war on terror following the 9/11 attacks has resulted in an entire section of the population coming under suspicion, with the formulation of the PREVENT program a clear manifestation of, Muslims being viewed solely under the prism of national security. This has had dire consequences, amplified by right-wing media. Collateral damage inflicted on a Muslim community, from a rise in hate crimes to an increase in social exclusion.
The Labour Party has not been immune from this rising mood music of Islamophobia. A recent survey by the Labour Muslim Network, found that 59% did not feel “well represented by the leadership”, and 44% did not believe the party takes the issue of Islamophobia seriously. Over a third (37%) have directly witnessed Islamophobia within the party. It found that 55% did not trust the leadership to tackle Islamophobia effectively and 48% did not have confidence in the party’s complaints procedure to deal with Islamophobia.
So when the Parliamentary Conservative Party was aiming for its Obama moment, with Rishi Sunak and a post-racial Britain. The Labour Party was moving forward with its own post-racial project, the Forde Report. The report laid bare how senior Labour staff displayed “deplorably factional and insensitive, and at times discriminatory, attitudes” towards Corbyn and his supporters. It revealed that there was a “hierarchy of racism” in the party which ignored Black and Asian people. Again, Tower Hamlets provides its own ‘WTF episode’, with former MP Jim Fitzpatrick providing the script.
Responding to the report, Corbyn’s former advisor Andrew Fisher wrote: “Forde confirms that reflection is necessary. Cultural change requires painstaking work, not glib assertions of change. In this atmosphere of collective reflection, I got a phone call from an agitated, senior former, Muslim, Labour Councillor. What was he angry about?
Muslim Is In Fashion with the Party?
“Yo man, where are you going? The party is just starting.”
‘Get Out’ – Jordan Peele
He just got back from a meeting with senior members of the national Labour Party. They were all convinced that in the future, Muslim candidates should be ‘visibly Muslim’. Apparently, you can’t be a ‘good’ Muslim Labour candidate unless you wear a headscarf if you identify as a woman, and a beard if you identify as a man. Apparently, that is the demand from Muslim Labour Party members and voters.
I asked him what he said in response. He said, “Bullshit!“
A glib response, by the Party hierarchy, to the painstaking work required for a cultural change, in light of the damning findings of the Forde Report. Another WTF episode of the social thriller of being a Muslim in the Labour Party. A social thriller where the fears and the horrors coming from the party, come from the way in which it interacts with its members.
Below I will explain how, to pick apart this problematic response, as well as the motivations. An exercise that will reveal the structural problems and thinking the Labour Party has towards Muslims and racism in general.
“Fair skin has been in favour for, what, the past hundreds of years. But, now the pendulum has swung back. Black is in fashion!”
‘Get Out’ – Jordan Peele
I want your Muslimness, Man.
“I Want Your Eye, Man.”
‘Get Out’ – Jordan Peele
Just like its predecessor, this demand for all things Muslim is less by the Labour Party of understanding Muslims than it is about using Muslim culture for itself. Objectifying, sexualizing and ultimately trivialising peoples of so-called “primitive” or “exotic” cultures, in a process of racial ”othering”.
At its essence, the non-overt ‘racist’ impulse from party high-ups for visible Muslim candidates, is the feeling that the only contributions Muslims make to the party are our Muslimness and the connections we bring with it. It is an impulse not borne out of hate, but out of patronising love. A ’Muslimphilia’, a 21st century equivalent of ‘Negrophilia’.
This objectification of Muslims and other minorities often leads actors from these communities to suppress their own identities and play to the expectations of party high-ups. You are either a poster for diversity or a supervillain infiltrator. Witness the appropriation of the image of the headscarf by a Labour lead Tower Hamlets Council. On the one hand, you have the vilification of Shamima Begum, on the other the ‘token’ promotion in marketing of headscarf-wearing members of the administration.
Muslims in the Labour Party, have to play to the expectations of being super liberals, in order to overcome the trope of having a dual loyalty or ulterior motive. For example, in Tower Hamlets Labour politics, every Muslim member is suspected of being ‘a Lutfur Rahman’ or a potential ‘Lutfur Rahman’. Thus, to overcome this suspicion, Muslim members have to show and constantly demonstrate uber-loyalty to the Party.
This playing to expectations leads Muslims and other minority participants to suppress their individual identities and feelings. Aggravated by the desire to win office and positions, within the party and in public institutions. A suppression which leads many into the ‘Sunken Place’.
Politics of The Sunken Place
“You’re paralysed. Just like that day when you did nothing. You did nothing. Now…sink into the floor.”
Get Out’ – Jordan Peele
In Jordan Peele’s movie, ‘Get Out!’, the iconic scene is The Sunken Place. A position, or a loss of awareness of one’s identity, is often coupled with flight from one’s usual environment. Medically, this feeling is associated with certain forms of hysteria and epilepsy. In terms of psychiatry, a fugue state. A place, where, “Chris [Wasington] and other unfortunate black people fall into once they’re in the clutches of a rich, white, and – at least on first impressions – apparently liberal family, the Armitage.”
An allegory, for the widely felt frustration of many minority groups, against“ liberal inertia and unspoken white supremacist hegemony”. Jordan Peele describes it as “It’s the system. It’s all these cogs in the wheel that sort of keeping us where we are … The Sunken Place is the silencing. It’s the taking away of our expression, of our art. It’s the very fact that this movie has never been made before.”
In the Tower Hamlets Labour Party, we have had our own expression of the sunken place. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, the Poplar and Limehouse CLP commissioned the anti-racist charity ‘Hope Not Hate’. They were contracted to run workshops with members from various racial minorities, to discuss their feelings of racism within the local Labour Party and what could be done to mitigate things.
I attended the Islamophobia workshop and my friend attended the anti-black racism workshop. What struck me, even to this day, were the feelings of Somali members. In the workshop, they expressed that they had felt used and abused by the local party leadership for the sake of token diversity, and the feeling of helplessness, marginalisation and silencing they have. As they only have a performance role in the local Labour Party. No real power or representation, just there to provide the optics of one.
But beyond being able to express frustration, it seems a little has changed. A report was then produced by ‘Hope Not Hate’, for the Tower Hamlets Labour Party Leadership in 2020. It contained findings along with recommendations. It has not been published to members nor actioned upon to this day. Actions paralleling the national Labour Party with the much-delayed Forde Report.
But optics in politics is important, right? And this optics or performance of Muslimness in Labour candidates is coming from the Muslim community. So what is the problem here?
But is it demanded from within the Muslim community?
Muslims are for Muslims, right?
Rose Armitage: “Mom and Dad, my black boyfriend will be coming up this weekend, and I just don’t want you to be shocked that he’s a black man.”
‘Get Out’ – Jordan Peele
Implicit in this alleged narrative of demand from the Muslim community for visible Muslim representatives, there is an underlying syllogism. The logic is that somehow Muslim representatives, exclusively serve their co-religionists. The basis of this Islamophobic trope is that Muslim political culture has a totally different ‘alien’ base from Modern Western Civilisation. Ipso facto, Muslims are hardwired to exclusively look after the interests of their co-religionists.
Really?
In order to debunk this reasoning, I will attempt to answer the charge from within the Muslim tradition. Using a variation of Ibn Rushd’s (Averroes) doctrine of the double truth. An analytical framework, allows us to draw a distinction between, a Muslim community’s normative tradition, based on theology and a Muslim community’s positive tradition, focusing on history, custom, and practice.
Looking at the Muslim positive tradition, throughout history Muslims even in positions of power and responsibility were in most cases always in a minority. For example, Muslims only became a majority in Bengal quite recently, until that time they were always in a minority. Therefore, in circumstances where Muslims were in a minority or had neighbours from a sizable religious minority. A secular, humanist tradition was developed.
A humanism just like its counterpart in the European Academy, where the realisation of the full potential of humans, and their advancement, was the stated goal. This humanist tradition is documented by academics such as Richard M Eaton in his, India in the Persinate Age 1000 – 1756, or by George Makdisi in his, The Rise of Humanism in Classical Islam and the Christian West. Even a controversial figure such as the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb is constrained by the facts of circumstances and a Persianate secular culture, in his project to mould the Indian Subcontinent in his austere dervish image. A fact documented in his biography by the academic Audrey Truschke.
Yes, there is an abuse of minorities in a number of Muslim majority societies, but this should be seen in the context of the rise of the nation-state and majoritarian politics. Nation states and nationalism that was introduced by Europeans to Muslim societies following the wake of colonial conquest.
A similar trajectory can be traced in Europe and the treatment of minorities. A record that was documented and analysed by the historian Mark Mazower in his book the ‘Dark Continent’. In the book, Mazower concludes that putting aside the examples of Britain and France, liberal democracy is the exception rather than the rule for the rest of Europe.
Now, Muslim history and practice have been covered. But the demand for visibly Muslim candidates is coming from scripture? Right?
Look, I know what you are thinking. It is in the Quran, right?
Dean Armitage: “I know what you’re thinking.”
Chris Washington: “What?”
‘Get Out’ – Jordan Peele
To double-check, in terms of Muslim normative tradition. I contacted a foremost Islamic Theologian, a student of a former Supreme Court judge of Pakistan. I posed the following question to him:
Question:
Is it a necessary condition for the next MP or Councillor (locally), if she is a female, to wear a headscarf and if it is a male to cover his head and have a beard?
Answer:
The wearing of the headscarf (likewise keeping a beard) is the practical implementation of a strongly emphasised teaching of Islam. All Muslims are expected to adhere to this to the best of their ability.
However, to politicise this as a precondition for a Muslim MP/councillor is not appropriate in the current Islamophobic climate. The implementation of this ruling is based upon the choice of the individual, and therefore this question should be coming from the prospective candidate him/herself.
Wallahu Alam (And God knows best.)
So this demand is not coming from Muslim normative tradition, with no theological basis. A definitive no. So where is it coming from?
Get Out?
“I Mean, I Told You Not To Go In That House.”
‘Get Out’ – Jordan Peele
The above use and abuse of Muslim ‘visibility’, is a good example of how issues of race and racism are weaponised for sectional political gains. Societal pressures from the right and left galvanised, upon the expediency of using minorities to champion and demonise, in terms of broader cultural, economic and political identities. Without dealing with the real issues at hand faced by minorities.
Hannah Arendt documented a similar use earlier in the 20th century, focusing on the Dreyfuss Affair, in her controversial thesis exploring Antisemitism in, ‘The Origins of Totalitarianism’. Today, nationally, we have the weaponisation of Antisemitism and Islamophobia by opposing factions within the Labour Party. In all the exchange of words, no concrete solutions are put forward in dealing with the underlying issue giving rise to, for example, Islamophobia.
The underlying issue, of Islamophobia, is that somehow Muslims are alien to the European Experience. Somehow we don’t belong here, so ‘special’, accommodation must be made. A view that is factually and historically inaccurate. Muslims have always been part of the European experience, from the earliest days in Spain and Scilly to Eastern Europe from the late medieval period and onwards.
Nearer to home, in East London, Bengali Muslims have had a continuous presence for nearly 400 years, from the days of the East India Company. So imagine, how hilarious it was to sit in as a Councillor in Labour lead Tower Hamlets Council, to witness the view that we are somehow recent migrants. I guess Bengali Muslims were never seen until they decided to get involved in the political process.
And that is the point, until you are involved in the political process, you will not be seen or heard. Including issues that you are passionate about.
Many of us Muslims in the Labour Party, are berated by friends asking us why we are putting up with the ‘crap’ within the party, and why don’t we just leave. My answer is that given the endemic levels of poverty and social exclusion faced by Muslims and other demographics within the multi-racial working class, something has to be done. Being grassroots activists, we have no choice, but to participate in politics. Unlike our white, affluent, liberal counterparts in the party, participation in the party is one of necessity, not a lifestyle choice.
In stating this determination, I’m not raising a clenched fist of defiance, but extending a hand of friendship. And asking those fearful of Muslims to put their fear and suspicions aside, and embark together on the humanist endeavour of the advancement of mankind and realisation of its full potential. Treat Muslims as individuals, with a background that can make a positive contribution, and not exclusively focus on our backgrounds.
If the renaissance painter, Raphael, can place a turbaned and brown-skinned, Averroes amongst the dead, white, Europeans in his School of Athens. Then it is not too much of an ask to place Muslims, without fear and suspicion, in prominent positions within the Labour Party.
Given the position of the party both nationally and locally in Tower Hamlets, Muslims should be at the forefront in rebuilding and propelling both entities to power. To bring about a renewal, a Renaissance. Half a millennium ago, Pico de Mirolla, kicked off the Renaissance in Italy, in his ‘Oration on the Dignity of Man’. With the words:
“I have read in the records of the Arabians, reverend Fathers, that Abdala the Saracen, when questioned as to what on this stage of the world, as it were, could be seen most worthy of wonder, replied:”
“There is nothing to be seen more wonderful than man.”
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