Labour's Muslim women MPs tell of campaign of intimidation and abuse

Election candidates say their faith and ethnicity was questioned by endorsed rivals

Shabana Mahmood, MP for Birmingham Ladywood, said the campaign was sullied by "harassment and intimidation". Getty Images

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Leading Labour Muslim women MPs have hit out at an unprecedented campaign of intimidation endured during the campaign, describing physical threats and a hate-filled stream of misinformation that forced some to accept police protection.

Senior cabinet member Shabana Mahmood, MP for Birmingham Ladywood, was one of the politicians who gained police guards. Veteran backbencher Naz Shah, who has run the gauntlet of high-profile divisive elections for more than a decade, said the abuse was unprecedented.

Ms Mahmood, who became Justice Secretary on Friday, held her seat but saw her majority diminished as many voters opted for independent candidate Akhmed Yakoob. In her declaration speech Ms Mahmood said the campaign was sullied by “harassment and intimidation”.

She condemned the “assault on democracy itself” and said it was unacceptable to “intimidate and threaten” people. “British politics must soon wake up to what happened at this election,” she said. “And let me make this clear because this matters deeply to me and my family: it is never acceptable to deny anyone their faith; to brand them an infidel.”

An outspoken critic of Islamophobia who resigned from the front benches after voting for a ceasefire in Gaza in November, Ms Shah was not endorsed by high-profile campaign The Muslim Vote. It targeted her constituency, which has a 54 per cent Muslim electorate.

“It is really toxic out there. I’ve never experienced anything like it ever,” she said in a final message to her campaign team this week.

“It’s been vicious, particularly against Muslim women candidates,” said one Labour campaigner, a Muslim woman, who had been travelling across the country to support candidates throughout the election period.

Labour’s initial support for Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, and its refusal to call for an immediate ceasefire and arms embargo on Israel has driven a wedge with many in its traditional support base.

The Muslim Vote (TMV) endorsed a range of alternatives to Labour candidates. Among its pledges was to “root out Islamophobia and discrimination” across UK systems.

It backed the wave of independent candidates challenging Labour over Palestine, including former party leader Jeremy Corbyn who was re-elected, veteran South African politician Andrew Feinstein, and British Palestinian Leanne Mohamad, who came close to unseating senior Labour politician Wes Streeting.

Labour’s Muslim candidates appeared to be disproportionately targeted by the campaign.

Attacks on faith and ethnicity

In some instances, Labour’s Muslim candidates saw their ethnicity or faith questioned by the endorsed candidates.

Former Labour MP Khalid Mahmood, who stood in Birmingham Perry Barr, was unseated by TMV-endorsed candidate Ayoub Khan. A series of posts by TMV accused Mr Mahmood of failing to “stand up” for “Muslim issues”, and supporting government programmes that are deemed anti-Muslim.

In East London, Rushanara Ali was re-elected by a narrow margin in Bethnal Green and Stepney, despite rivals who thrived on questioning her Bangladeshi Muslim origins.

Though Ms Ali has been a vocal supporter of the Palestinian cause, her abstention in the November motion on a ceasefire had been the source of contention.

Leader of the Worker’s Party of Britain George Galloway described Ms Ali as “the wrong Bengali MP” during an east London rally for his party this week. Mr Galloway himself lost in Rochdale, which he had represented since February.

Galloway-backed independent candidate Ajmal Masroor, a cleric and television presenter, was Ms Ali's main challenger. He spoke at mosques and canvassed outside schools, presenting the election as a spiritual matter, campaigners said.

Campaigners calling for an end to the war in Gaza hold a flag promoting Vaz Shabir, an independent candidate, in Keighley, north-west England. AFP

Posters of Mr Masroor were seen by The National stacked inside a local mosque. The strategy appeared to work, with Mr Masroor gaining 30 per cent of vote share, just shaded by Ms Ali's 34 per cent.

Sheikh Zahir Mahmood, one backer of The Muslim Vote, questioned the loyalty of local MPs as he urged his congregation in Oldham to vote with Gaza in the days before the election. “You have Muslim MPs who can't even ask for a ceasefire. [Their] affiliation is greater to their party than to the ummah,” he said, in a video shared online by an Islamist news website.

Future generations

The campaign also went against Labour Muslim candidates who were standing for the first time.

· Labour candidate Heather Iqbal, a former policy adviser to shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves, lost the Dewsbury and Batley seat by nearly 7,000 votes to independent Iqbal Mohamed, who was endorsed by The Muslim Vote.

· In Barking, Green candidate Simon Antony was endorsed instead of Labour candidate Nesil Caliskan, a former leader of the council for Enfield who has Turkish Muslim heritage.

· In Sheffield, Green candidate Angela Argenzio was endorsed instead of Labour’s Abtisam Mohamed, a Yemen-born lawyer with strong roots in the city’s Arabic-speaking and Muslim communities.

Dirty tricks

An image of Labour supporters has been doctored by an unknown activist with posters held by Mohammad Maroof, right, and another Muslim campaigner changed to Israeli flags. Photo: Mohammad Maroof

Labour’s Muslim candidates and their supporters have also been targeted by online misinformation about their faith.

Labour member Mohammad Maroof said the level of online harassment had left him fearful for his safety. An image of him with a group of campaigners was doctored to replace Labour placards with the Israeli flag.

“This is harmful to community cohesion. I'm very concerned about this type of behaviour. This is my community, this is my home. I've never felt I was in danger, now I am quite concerned about my safety,” he told The National.

· One video shows Ms Shah being harassed by a local protester while she is out canvassing, who pledges to “follow her around” and describes her as a “dirty Zionist”.

· An online video of Ms Ali at an event with supporters from the Bengali community described them as “traitors”.

· A photo of Ms Mohamed meeting with mosque community leaders was defaced with the slogan “a vote for Labour is a vote for genocide” and circulated online by unknown activists.

There is no suggestion that The Muslim Vote was involved in these particular attacks on candidates and it did not comment on how it supported the independents.