Why Labour are losing Muslims

Since the genocide in Gaza began in the aftermath of the 7th October attacks, politicians on both sides of the house in both the US and UK — Tories, Labour, Republicans and Democrats — have mostly been competing for who can be the most slavish in support of Israel’s right to “defend itself”, even weeks later when it has become obvious that Israel’s interest is in exacting revenge rather than defending itself or even rescuing its own hostages. Both here and there, there has been a great deal of distress and anger among the Muslim population at their elected representatives’ obvious indifference or outright contempt for the lives of the hundreds of Palestinians who are being killed in missile or air strikes daily. There has been much talk of Muslims not voting, or voting for third-party candidates, or at least tactically to ensure that legislators who have gone along with the pro-Israel line or not spoken out against the mass murder or supported calls for a ceasefire lose their seats at the next general or congressional election. This has been responded to by the leadership with a half-hearted campaign against Islamophobia and by activists with sneers such as “don’t you want a Labour government?”.

The people who are resigning are not, at least not all, extremists; they are all people who remained in the party after Jeremy Corbyn lost the leadership and who were not expelled in the antisemitism dragnet. They include people like Shaista Aziz in Oxford, who has been at the forefront of a campaign to make football safe for Muslim women and encourage their participation. The reason for the dissent is that a population of mainly Muslims in a part of the world we care deeply about is being slaughtered and Labour’s leadership are refusing to condemn it. When Keir Starmer was asked a simple question recently about what his “red lines” were as regards Israel’s behaviour, he gave a halting response, reminding us of the “worst terrorist attack on Israel since the Holocaust” and a “humanitarian crisis that was already in existence”, which it certainly was not if you compare the situation in Gaza before 7th October to the situation now, when the territory has not had access to fresh water for nearly a month and the hospitals that are still standing are running out of power. He then told us that it was not correct to tell “a sovereign country, when 200 of its civilians are being held hostage, that they must give up their right to self-defence”, as if it was self-defence to massacre thousands of civilians (potentially including several of the hostages) before making any attempt to take on the people holding the hostages. His response clearly indicates that he does not care about Gaza’s civilians, and we do.

We are also painfully aware that there was a witch-hunt in the Labour party that lasted several years, where many members, including many Muslims, were accused of antisemitism on the basis of false interpretations of politically motivated definitions of that term. When we attempted to raise the matter of Islamophobia then, we were accused of “whataboutery” or told the two prejudices were different, that antisemitism was not normal racism, or that Islamophobia had been invented by Islamists and was just a trick to cover the Muslim community’s shortcomings. At the same time as Israeli abuses in Palestine were getting worse and worse, it became more and more difficult and more costly to even talk about these things; you had to gauge your words carefully lest you be accused of invoking an “antisemitic trope”. The people telling us “don’t be silly!” had only sympathy and understanding for Jews who refused to vote Labour while Corbyn was leader, including Labour members (this is against party rules, especially publicly telling others not to vote Labour, and would get any other party member expelled). And let’s not forget: this was not about actual harm coming to Jews, or being advocated or threatened by Corbyn or anyone who supported him; the issue was that no British government could be countenanced that did not maintain a policy of 100% indulgence of Israel, however extreme and violent it became.

While some British Muslims are Arabs and Somalis, the mainstay consists of South Asians, and South Asian Muslims are not only concerned about Palestine but about Kashmir and the worsening situation of Muslims in India itself. Kashmir is also under a brutal military occupation which has worsened since the BJP, led by the infamous Narendra Modi who presided over the Gujarat pogrom in 2002, came to power, although his abuses have been cheered on by so-called liberals in the Indian and international media as well. Methods used against Palestinians also tend to be copied by Hindu fascists; we have seen the house demolitions used to punish the families of Palestinian ‘terrorists’ (this doesn’t have to mean actual terrorists, just anyone who attacks soldiers or settlers) being used against Indian Muslims who are not even terrorists, just people who protested against discrimination or violence by the Hindu extremists. What response can we expect from our politicians next time there is a pogrom, or if the next real or imagined provocation from Muslims leads to a full-blown genocide by Hindus emboldened by the spectacle of a genocide in Gaza with no reaction from world leaders except excuses? There are nearly 1.5 billion people in India, including more than 170 million Muslims; the numbers could dwarf any prior genocide depending on how widespread the violence is. We have seen Labour politicians boast of their connections to the BJP, including the infamous Keith Vaz (who has now left Parliament because of a sex scandal) who boasted of using his bonus to help fund Modi’s appearance at Wembley stadium.

In short, Muslims want to work with a party which holds that their lives are at least as important as anyone’s feelings, and we do not want our votes to count towards putting a man in power who is a coward, has no obvious moral compass, and cannot condemn mass murder even when genocidal intent is made clear without consulting his focus groups and handlers. They can promise all they like, and remind us of what the last Labour government did for us (when we remember control orders and a government that fought to extend detention without charge), but Sure Start centres and improved bus services are just not that important when our people are being massacred with weapons supplied partly from this country and with the tacit approval of Tory and Labour politicians. And no, as the opposition leader, Starmer could not have done anything about it directly, but he could have spoken out, could have stood up for a long-persecuted people now facing death and degradation on a daily basis, but made political calculations and chose instead to side with the murderers. As they never tired of reminding us when Corbyn was leader, Labour is meant to be an anti-racist and anti-fascist party; a party that considers genocide to be any nation’s right, whatever the provocation, is neither, and is worth nobody’s effort to campaign for.

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