Two Candidates to Succeed Johnson: Why Do Muslims in UK Fear Both Options?

With the departure of the resigned British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on September 6, 2022, by formally submitting his resignation to the Queen, Muslims fear the increasing hostility against them in the era of the new prime minister.

One of the two final candidates of the Conservative Party members would be chosen on September 15 to become the party's president and prime minister, Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss.

Because of the Conservative Party's hostility to Islam and the spread of Islamophobia within it, British Muslims are wondering about the ideological background of the candidates and what each of them will offer them.

 

Immigrant Background

Rishi Sunak, a Hindu candidate of Indian origin, according to what the British Hitch website reported on July 21, 2022, is one of the most important British Conservative Party officials who focus on the issue of extremism.

In an election campaign, Sunak pledged to eliminate organizations that promote extremism in the UK and revive a government program aimed at "tackling extremism," particularly Islamic, the Deccan Herald reported on August 3, 2022.

Sunak said he will do whatever it takes to redouble the efforts to counter Islamic extremism and root out those who speak loudly in their hatred.

During the party's elections, Sunak vowed to crack down on what he called "Islamic extremists" without specifying who he meant and ignoring Muslims' demand for him to condemn Islamophobia.

This was confirmed by the Muslim Council of Britain spokesman, Miqdaad Versi, in an article in The Guardian on August 3.

Sunak refused to respond to a letter submitted to him by civil activists and parliamentarians regarding his plan to combat Islamophobia, which is afflicting British Muslims' lives and has recently increased, according to The Independent on August 4.

The Ready4Rishi campaign team released details of what it called "ambitious plans" to tackle Islamic extremism and protect the UK from terrorism if Sunak wins, noting that it would also separate Muslim terrorists from the rest of the prison population.

Although of Indian origins immigrating to Britain, Sunak stood firmly with immigration and refugee laws and was always a supporter of any law that reduces the number of immigrants in the country, getting tough on the issue of receiving refugees, including Muslims from India, Pakistan, and Arab countries.

During his leadership of the Treasury, which is the second most important ministry after the prime minister, he gave a lot of funding to all efforts to prevent the arrival of refugees by sea to Britain.

Sunak promised to "identify those eligible" for asylum and set an "annual cap" on the number of refugees entering Britain, describing Britain's immigration policy as "chaotic," according to the BBC on July 27, 2022.

 

Truss and Islamophobia

On the other hand, The Local Report website indicated, on July 21, 2022, in a report entitled Is Liz Truss a Muslim, Jewish or Christian?, that Truss does not have a specific religious belief.

It added that she portrays herself as a moderate who will lead the country to a period of prosperity with freedom of religion, but without revealing her conviction.

When asked about the freedom to convert between religions, Truss stressed in a parliamentary session that freedom of expression and religious freedom must be protected from the danger of religious conversion by force and prevent coercion, according to the Christian Institute website in December 2021.

Like Sunak, Truss did not respond to demands to counter Islamophobia within Britain's Conservative Party, but her campaign claimed she would take an "intolerant approach to Islamophobia."

But the general secretary of Finsbury Park Mosque in London, Mohammed Kozbar, told Al-Estiklal: "Unfortunately, it is not a priority for any of the candidates to lead the UK to address the phenomenon of Islamophobia within the party and across the country."

He added that "the competition between them is based on who imposes more restrictions on Muslims and their institutions, and this is in line with the policy of the extreme right pursued by the Conservative Party in an attempt to win the votes of the right within the party."

When she was Minister of Justice in 2016, Truss published a report on the treatment of what she called radical Muslim preachers in British prisons, warning of the danger lurking in the influence and direction of these extremist preachers on other vulnerable prisoners.

This was followed by the warning of a report by the British Prison Service called "terrorism in prisons" of failing to realize the dangers posed by "Islamic gangs" inside prisons.

There are more than 200 inmates in prisons convicted under the terrorism law, the majority of whom are Muslims, according to the BBC on April 27, 2022.

She also opposes immigration and immigrants and has said that if she becomes the leader of the Conservative Party and prime minister, she will increase the number of border forces from 9,000 to 10,800 to prevent thousands of immigrants from reaching Britain.

When the British, including Muslims, went to the Ukrainian embassy in London in March 2022 to express their willingness to join the Foreign Legion and fight the Russian invasion, Truss stated that she would support them unequivocally.

 

'Conservative' Islamophobia

Many accusations have been leveled against the Conservative Party of being "unfriendly" to Muslims in Britain, and there are accusations that it covers up the growth of Islamophobia within its ranks.

Regardless of who will take over the leadership of the party and the government in September 2022, Muslims warn of the rise of what they call "conservative Islamophobia," where hatred escalates unusually within the ruling party in exchange for sympathy with the occupying state of Israel.

On May 25, 2021, a report prepared by Conservative member Swaran Singh found that the party had registered 1,400 complaints about 727 incidents of discrimination between 2015 and 2020, two-thirds of which were discrimination against Muslims (Islamophobia), according to The Independent.

The results of an opinion poll showed that 7 out of 10 Muslims in Britain, at a rate of 44 percent, are exposed to Islamophobia practices in their workplaces. In contrast, the results of the same opinion poll indicated an increase in the integration of Muslims into British society.

In recent years, the ruling Conservative Party has faced criticism over the involvement of an increasing number of its officials in incidents related to the phenomenon of Islamophobia.