Far from being ‘the enemy within’, as seen by most UK media, Muslims who rejected the rotten two-party system in the local elections were voting patriotically and deserve praise

For many years, the mainstream media and political class have portrayed Muslims as an “enemy within” which refuses to engage with British democracy and cultivates a separatist agenda.

That line of attack has always been false, and last week was decisively proved wrong.

British Muslims made a massive intervention in the May elections. They abandoned Labour, voting instead for independent parties which support a ceasefire and have condemned Israeli atrocities in Gaza.

By doing so they sent out a message to Keir Starmer that his slavish support for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may cost his party dozens of seats in the looming general election.

‘Foments hatred’

Take for example the splash headline in the Daily Mail: “Dozens of pro-Gaza activists elected.”

In the words of Chris Doyle, the respected director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, this was “one of the worst most dangerous front pages ever on a British publication” – one that “foments hatred and risk lives”.

The Daily Mail failed to mention in its coverage that over 34,700 Palestinians have, according to Gaza’s health ministry, been slaughtered over the last seven months.

In such terrible circumstances, it’s only natural that Muslim voters should rise up against Starmer and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s cross-party coalition in support of Israel’s far-right prime minister, Netanyahu.

And, of course, it’s not just Muslims who are horrified by the line taken by our two main party leaders. So are countless other Britons, including many Jews.

Principled opposition

In this terrible moment in the history of the Middle East, there’s nothing wrong with being a “pro-Gaza activist”, to use the clumsy Daily Mail formulation.

In fact, the phrase is surely synonymous with support for human decency and principled opposition to the indiscriminate slaughter being carried out by the Israeli army.

Do not forget that Islamophobia is rife within Starmer’s Labour. Ali Milani, Labour’s candidate against Boris Johnson in Uxbridge in 2019, highlighted this inconvenient fact in a devastating interview with Middle East Eye.

The Martin Forde KC report into racism inside Labour confirmed that Labour has a serious Islamophobia problem. Though not as dreadful as Sunak’s Conservatives.

Patriotic

As I set out in a series of investigative articles for MEE, the Conservatives persistently smear and target Britain’s Muslim minority, always operating in alliance with a poisonously Islamophobic mass media.

This does raise the urgent question: how should Muslims vote at a time when the two main political parties have turned virulently against them? It would have been entirely understandable had British Muslims recoiled from a democratic system that has treated them with disdain and contempt.

They did not reject British democracy. Instead, they turned their back on a rotten two-party system that has chosen to target and despise Muslims rather than give them a voice.

To sum up, British Muslims have voted in a patriotic way. Over the last few months, most voters, though not the political and media classes, have supported an immediate ceasefire.

Most important of all, their votes have had an effect. Recently, Starmer, who for so long saw his role as Westminster point man for Netanyahu, suddenly changed his tune.

He demanded that Netanyahu should abandon plans for a Rafah offensive, and called for an immediate ceasefire.

This was new language from Starmer. It would never have happened but for last week’s Muslim vote.