For the first time in my life, sectarian politics has become a part of English political life. The rigid adherence to a narrow set of beliefs – whether religious or ethnic – is beginning to cause serious problems. This intolerance seems to be growing in tandem with votes being cast en masse along certain lines.
Evidence is not hard to find. Just this month after a local election in Leeds a Green Party councillor called Mothin Ali shouted “Allahu Akbar!” after being elected to a city council. This shocked many people and outraged others. On Wednesday, a pro-Palestinian protest near Downing Street turned violent after thousands of people staged an “emergency rally”. A policewoman suffered facial injuries from a glass bottle. In the summer of 2022, there were ugly clashes in Birmingham between Hindus and Muslims.
Political disagreements from other parts of the world have been imported into this country, principally from the Middle East and the Indian sub-continent. Those of us who live here are being forced to deal with the consequences.
The major worry is that sectarianism often leads to extremism. Sectarian beliefs are a breeding ground for terrorist groups who may then commit atrocities at will. We should all be fearful of that.
According to a poll published by JL Partners in April and commissioned by the Henry Jackson Society, 23 per cent of 18-34 year old British Muslims support the concept of jihad. One in three Muslims in this age bracket want Sharia Law to be imposed in Britain – that is, death for apostasy; amputation of a hand for theft; stoning or lashing for adultery. Granted, this was just one poll of 1,000 people, but those statistics should ring a very loud alarm right around the country.
If anybody doubts the extent to which political parties are now in thrall to this phenomenon, just consider how a few days ago Angela Rayner, the deputy leader of the Labour Party, sat in a room full of Muslim men in her Ashton-under-Lyne constituency begging them for their vote on 4 July and thanking them for getting her “over the line” in 2019.
Rayner, whose 4,000 majority is being targeted by George Galloway’s Workers Party of Britain, promised her audience that Labour “supports” the International Criminal Court’s decision to arrest Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu – and Hamas leaders – over allegations of war crimes in Gaza.
The paradox here is that some groups are perfectly relaxed about women being reduced to second class citizens with no vote at all. And so what this country faces is a situation where the democratic rights of women risk being set back by almost a century, universal suffrage having been achieved in 1928.
Can the situation be reversed? That is a very hard question to answer. Perhaps in the first instance it would be best to say that we should all be working to make sure it doesn’t get any worse.
My view is that mass immigration over the past 25 years under Labour and the Tories is responsible for the rise in sectarian politics. Nobody voted for mass immigration; taxpayers have had no say in it; and everybody has been told in no uncertain terms that they must accept it. But in so many ways it has caused more problems than it has solved.
A third of a million people from the subcontinent and 140,000 from Nigeria came to live in Britain in the last year alone, according to the ONS last week. Will they all integrate fully into British society?
What is more, these islands have never before experienced large numbers of young people living here who not only refuse to adapt to our way of life but who wish for their way of life to become the norm for everybody else as well.
An uncomfortable reality must be confronted. No matter how long he has left in power, Sunak must address it head-on. Sir Keir Starmer had better have something meaningful to say and do about it as well if, as the bookmakers reckon, he is going to be in Number 10 from 5 July. I for one will hold his feet to the fire if he is in charge.
Nobody else in this election campaign but me would dare to make these points but I suspect that in the privacy of their own homes, many politicians from the Left and the Right are as concerned as I am about this disturbing trend. They owe it to the country to have an honest debate before things get any worse.
EMEA Tribune is not involved in this news article, it is taken from our partners and or from the News Agencies. Copyright and Credit go to the News Agencies, email news@emeatribune.com Follow our WhatsApp verified Channel
