Here's a story (I won't name the person who told me this) that illustrates where we are in modern Britain. Someone who was a Labour Party agent in a town in Britain with a sizeable Muslim population was asked to meet a 'community leader' to discuss the next election. He went...
...and sat down at a table. The person threatened to withhold the votes of the hundreds of postal votes he controlled because the Labour candidate had not satisfied him on a particular issue. To illustrate that this was not an idle threat, he brought in shoeboxes full of....
...postal votes from the last election, all filled in for Labour but unposted. 'This will happen again unless you do as I say' was what he pretty much explicitly said. This agent (a decent person who is no longer in Labour) just left & refused to have anything to do with it.
I'm afraid that not all Lab agents etc who find themselves in a similar position react similarly. Sometimes the threat isn't made as blatantly, it's more implicit. But we have imported the corrupt sectarian politics of clientelism into this country & then let it fester. It stinks
I also spent years canvassing for Labour. One road in my ward had a lot of Muslim voters. Hundreds of times this is what happened. A woman in a veil opened the door. She spoke no more than a few words of English. When I managed to get across to her that it was an election, she...
...would say 'Ask my husband' or 'My husband is not in'. Once I got a woman who spoke reasonable English. She was quite explicit and said 'My husband tells me how to vote, I obey him as a good Muslim'. The idea she would be allowed a political opinion of her own was outlandish
This wasn't just one or two. This was the default. Occasionally you might get a younger Muslim woman who appeared to defy this. But 98% of the time this was the reality. I am sorry, it's not on. We shouldn't accept this as ok. This is Britain, not rural Pakistan
So you can see why, when I see Labour politicians blithering on about Islamophobia and how we need to restrict free speech to 'tackle' it, I see red. They are ignoring reality and putting on an act to curry favour with corrupt Islamic vote-harvesters. It is rotten
If thinking that all of this is not ok, if thinking that Muslims should either adapt to our basic social and political norms (e.g. not being corrupt, not being misogynists) or not be here, makes me an 'Islamophobe' or whatever, so be it. I don't care. The hour is late. Wake up
Also, the silence of most 'feminists' on these issues is shameful. There are lots of women right under your noses who are oppressed. But because they wear hijabs & you're too cowardly to criticise Islam, you ignore it & blither on about 'tampon poverty' or whatever instead
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
