British Muslims have started the process of leaving the UK over fears for their ‘personal safety’ after Boris Johnson is Prime Minister (PM) for five years a UK-based local newspaper claimed.
According to the paper, among them is the head of a Muslim charity, which provides food parcels for poor people in Manchester, saying he was scared for the ‘future of his children’.
Manzoor Ali said, ‘I’m scared for my personal safety, I worry about my children’s future.’
Similarly, a Labor Party parliamentary candidate from London area Faiza Shahen Tuesday in a twitter message says that she has had ‘five different families discuss their UK exit plan with me in case racism gets worse’. She added that it was ‘frightening that this is where we are’. She even claimed one of her own relatives is among people who are considering leaving the UK over fears at the ‘normalisation of racism’.
The paper says that Muslims are concerned about their future after the Johnson win the election and keeping in view his number of controversial comments he made in the past, including his remarks in a 2005 Spectator article in which he claimed it was only ‘natural’ for the public to be scared of Islam. Johnson also received a considerable degree of criticism for comparing Muslim women to ‘letterboxes and bank robbers’ in a column for the Telegraph last year. During the election campaign he also apologised for Islamophobia in the Conservative party, after several candidates shared posts by Tommy Robinson, referring to Muslims as scum.
Leading magazine foreign Policy in its online edition published a piece by H.A Heller argues that the hatred of Muslims is even more rampant in Britain and he thinks prime minister and his party have contributed to making it socially acceptable. Heller writing in the article said that 3,530 hate crime were committed against Muslims, accounting for almost half of all hate crimes against religious groups in the UK altogether yet attention to that issue has been paltry in comparison.
He further stated that when it comes to anti-Muslim sentiment, it isn’t just that there is a problem with Islamophobia among Tories. After all, the current prime minister once wrote that “Islamophobia-fear of Islam-seems a natural reaction” and insisted that “Islam is the problem.” More recently, a number of Conservative Party officials have been suspended over Islamophobic discourse, but the Tories seem unwilling to sufficiently address Islamophobia within the party.
Heller a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace believes it isn’t just in the Conservative Party where anti-Muslim bigotry is found. But he says It’s much more widespread throughout British society. According to his findings In-person hate crimes against Muslims from 2016 to 2017 increased by 30 percent and the following year, “Punish a Muslim Day” letters were sent to Muslim members of Parliament and families around London. He said mosques nationally have been attacked, including when a van plowed into a group of pedestrians who had been worshipping at a London mosque in June 2017. And now that the election is over, that problem isn’t about to go away. On the contrary, Islamophobia has been mainstreamed in a way never seen before in modern Britain. And it could get worse. Heller added.
