After JD Vance’s attack, who will stand up for British Muslims like me?
It’s difficult to know where to begin with unpicking this bizarre and unfounded comment.
Donald Trump has now been made the official Republican candidate for this November’s presidential election in the United States.
And already his newly-appointed running mate, JD Vance, has made headlines across Britain for recent comments he directed at the new Labour government.
During a speech at a rightwing conference last week, Vance said had been wondering which ‘truly Islamist country’ would be the first to gain access to nuclear weapons.
Recounting a conversation he had with a friend, he told the audience: ‘Maybe it is Iran, maybe Pakistan already kind of counts, and then we finally decided that it’s actually the UK – since Labour just took over.’
It’s difficult to know where to begin with unpicking this bizarre and unfounded comment.
First, the assumption that Starmer is somehow presiding over an ‘Islamist government’ is frankly laughable, given how Muslims dramatically abandoned Labour in some constituencies less than two weeks ago.
Even since the election, Starmer has convinced many of us that his concern for lost Muslim votes is practically non-existent.
In an interview with ITV’s Shehab Khan – when questioned on how his party would win back disillusioned British Muslims – Starmer repeatedly reiterated what a large mandate the country had given him.
In other words, it doesn’t matter if us Muslim voters feel ousted by the party we have always supported when Labour won a landslide – no matter how shallow it is.
But underneath the sheer absurdity of Vance’s comments is a very troubling Islamophobic current that mirrors much of what we are seeing in Britain at the moment.
Since the country went to the polls at the start of the month – and particularly with the election of five independent MPs who stood on a largely pro-Gaza ticket – conspiracy theories about Muslims have been rife.
Muslim voters have been accused of ‘intimidation’ for simply asking their representatives about their stance on voting for a ceasefire – or by accusing them of being complicit in the very invasion that their party supports by refusing to cease arms sales to Israel.
Anti-Muslim hysteria is so high in Britain at the moment that this narrative is going almost unchecked.
Any Muslim involvement in politics is, seemingly by default, evidence of us operating as a fifth column against the interests of the nation.
We’ve seen the same replicated across the country.
Almost as soon as the election results rolled in, sensationalist and downright Islamophobic headlines popped up in some publications accusing Muslim voters of dominating the election with their ‘sanitised Islamism’ or warning that politics has become ‘frightening’ and ‘horrifying’ due to the Muslim vote campaign.
Considering how Muslims are endlessly told to integrate, participate and engage – why is it that when we do, it’s suddenly nefarious and anti-British?
At the same time, JD Vance’s comments should be of concern to more than just British Muslims tired of the same Islamophobic tropes.
The fact is, we may well be looking at a Trump presidency in just a few months’ time, and so far Labour have proven that they’ll cower in the face of a dangerous world order dominated by Trump and his cronies.
New Foreign Secretary David Lammy has previously called JD Vance ‘a friend’ and the highest ranking Labour frontbenchers today seem unable to gather together the words to condemn Vance’s flagrant Islamophobia.
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner seemed to dismiss concerns about the comments, simply saying she ‘does not recognise’ this characterisation of Britain. While Minister James Murray smirked when asked about Vance’s remarks and reiterated that ‘it’s for America to decide who they elect’.
Just weeks into their premiership, this new Labour government has already proven itself impotent on foreign policy, and not just on this issue.
Despite previously claiming that Labour would comply with the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Netanyahu, on David Lammy’s first overseas trip as Foreign Secretary, he has been photographed shaking hands emphatically with the very architects of the utter decimation happening to Gaza as we speak.
The same already seems true at the prospect of a Trump presidency.
If this new Labour government can’t offer any strong rebuttal to the Islamophobia being spewed at Britain, directed at the very citizens that have already been isolated from their party, then what hope can Labour offer in the face of whatever far-right, populist and dangerous rhetoric another Trump term will likely whip up around the globe?
Under Labour so far, it looks like ‘the special relationship’ between the UK and USA will look like Britain nodding along to whatever bigotry and conspiracy is generated from across the pond.
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