A Step Forward for Islamic Influence in Britain?

by Bruce Bawer

In recent weeks and months, while the streets of Britain’s cities have been packed with angry Muslims protesting the government’s pro-Israel stance, Labour politicians who have previously relied on Muslim votes have been wringing their hands over polls showing that they can no longer count on Muslim support.

According to a new survey by the Labour Muslim Network, just 60% of British Muslims who voted for Labour in 2019 say they’ll do the same in this year’s general election. Earlier this month, former Tory Prime Minister David Cameron, who is currently Foreign Minister, shook things up by suggesting that the UK might be prepared to recognize a Palestinian state – an action that might well shift a great many Muslim votes to the Conservatives.

Now comes the news that certain members of Britain’s four-million-strong Muslim community – with support from the Muslim Association of Britain, the Muslim Council of Scotland, the Muslim Council of Wales, the Council of Sri Lankan Muslim Organisations, and over a dozen other such organizations – have come together to wage a self-described “community campaign.” And what are its goals?

There are, after all, many worthy goals to choose from. British Muslims might have joined forces to address the involvement of Muslim youths in grooming gangs – or, more broadly, in violent crime generally. They might have formed a movement to combat religious extremism and to teach newly arrived Muslims about Western democratic values. They might have made it their goal to liberate women and girls from their subordinate status in many Muslim homes – and, specifically, to fight such offenses as honor killing and forced marriage.

But no, these British Muslims have formed something called The Muslim Vote, the objective of which is easily and briefly stated. In fact, you can express it in a single word: power.

Nigel Farage, addressing this new development on GB News, called it “the beginning of sectarian politics” in the UK (not counting Northern Ireland during The Troubles). He noted that while Hindus, Sikhs, and blacks in Britain tend not to vote in blocs, Muslims – in this as in so many other ways – are another matter, and he worried that The Muslim Vote might facilitate the election of new MPs whose agenda will be entirely about pushing for appeasement of Islam. (Listening to Farage, it was not to be reminded of Ilhan Omar’s recent declaration, before a Somali-American audience, that as a member of Congress she is dedicated wholly not to the welfare of her constituents, let alone to her adopted country, but rather to improving the fortunes of the failed nation of her birth.)

Farage’s guest on this particular GB News segment, a former Labour Party advisor named Scarlett McGwire, dismissed his concerns, predicting that The Muslim Vote wouldn’t “go anywhere.” (Funny, isn’t it, how, throughout the history of the Islamization of Western Europe, there have always been prominent people who are quick to brush off concerns about the direction in which things are obviously going.) By contrast, Aletha Adu of The Guardian told another GB News host, Patrick Christys, that The Muslim Vote is “going to be huge,” while Jonathan Gullis, a Conservative MP representing Stoke-on-Trent, predicted that the group would be “massively influential” in constituencies like his.

Yet another guest on Christys’ program, GB News presenter Nana Akua, worried that the founding of The Muslim Vote portended the development of Muslim-majority enclaves that would change British culture and threaten Britain’s identity as “a Christian country.” Was she visiting from 1985?

Toward what end does The Muslim Vote seek to increase and direct its power? At present, it’s pursuing a single-issue campaign, one that’s totally focused on obtaining a ceasefire in Gaza. The Muslim Vote, we’re informed, will not support any politician “who voted against or abstained on the ceasefire vote” that was taken in Parliament on November 15. It will only back candidates who,  in its own words, are “pro-Palestine and pro-peace.” (As if “Palestine” and “peace,” in any world, belonged in the same sentence.)

The group’s website outlines the services that it offers British Muslims in its goal to organize support for Palestine. Among other things, it offers to guide them in deciding which political party to vote for. If they want to put up somebody for local office, it can help them choose the candidate, teach them how to run the campaign, and provide them with tech support, volunteers, polling data, marketing, legal advice, and funding.

The website also includes a list of parliamentary constituencies “where there is at least a 10% Muslim vote,” and promises to recommend a candidate for every one of these seats in the next general election, which is expected to take place in the second half of this year. The list itself is an impressive one. There are no fewer than 92 such constituencies, and the most heavily Muslim of them include Bethnal Green and Stepney (40.1% Muslim), Birmingham Ladywood (42.6%), Dewsbury and Batley (39%), Leicester South (31%), and Slough (27%).

It could be argued that 92 constituencies with significant Muslim minorities is nothing to be alarmed about, given that the House of Commons contains 650 constituencies in all. But of course the situation is far from static. Over public opposition, Britain’s major political parties continue to permit mass Muslim immigration. Meanwhile, British Muslims reproduce at a considerably higher rate than native Brits. All of which means that the political heft of Muslims in Britain can only grow – and grow quickly and steadily – in the years to come. And the fact is that the political influence of Muslims in Britain is already formidable, and has been for some time.

If the government, the police, the courts, and the media have been scared for decades to deal properly with the grooming gangs (just to name one issue that should be a matter of intense national shame) and if, instead, they’ve devoted their energies to punishing critics of Islam (in violation of the very fundamentals of British liberty), one can only imagine how much worse things can get as British Muslims continue to grow in numbers and, with the help of The Muslim Vote, learn how to use their numbers to maximize their leverage.

Indeed, a group like The Muslim Vote is manifestly transitional. What’s the next stage? The next stage is a full-blown Muslim party. That stage has already been reached in the Netherlands, where the Denk Party, founded in 2015, elected three MPs in last year’s elections, and in Sweden, where the Nuance Party (Partiet Nyans), founded in 2019, wants (among much else) to introduce harsh punishments for “Islamophobia,” blasphemy, and criticism of Islam, to increase Muslim immigration and build more mosques, to compel the inclusion of more Muslims in police departments and counterterrorism agencies, and to add to Swedish school curricula what could fairly be described as a Muslim version of Critical Race Studies. As I wrote here a year and a half ago, some Nuance Party candidates “have praised suicide bombers and spread Jew-hatred,” and one out of seven of them “have been convicted of serious crimes, including assault.” Is anyone surprised?

In Sweden, the arrival of Partiet Nyans coincided with the long-delayed success of the Sweden Democrats, which for a long time has been the only party in that country to discuss Islam and immigration honestly. Could something like this happen in the UK? Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party, now re-christened as Reform UK, plans to field a full slate of candidates in the next general election, and is seen as a real threat to the Tories on immigration, among other issues; somewhat less of a threat, perhaps, but worth keeping an eye on, is Laurence Fox’s anti-woke Reclaim Party, founded in 2020.

Could the advent of The Muslim Vote, at a time when more and more of our cousins across the pond are disgusted with the refusal of both of their major political parties to heed public cries for a halt to mass Muslim immigration (they’re even using, as we do, the term “uniparty”), be an indication that the established order at Westminster may finally be on the verge of a shake-up? Could this be the year when UK voters finally decide that enough is enough and hand the reins of power to people like Farage and Fox and perhaps even (gasp) Tommy Robinson, who if given the opportunity would actually do what the people want?

First published in FrontPage.