By Muhammad Mussa
LONDON (AA) – Leader of the Opposition Jeremy Corbyn on Tuesday piled pressure on the government to probe claims of Islamophobia within the Conservative party.
“I think if there are allegations made then an inquiry should be held and it should be addressed, and it should be dealt with,” Corbyn told the Press Association.
“Islamophobia, as with anti-Semitism, as with any other form of racism, has no place whatsoever in our society or in any of our political parties,” he said, adding that “nobody should be condoning it, nobody should be hiding it, everybody should be exposing it”.
“Let's dedicate ourselves, during Ramadan, to say we will drive out Islamophobia from our society, ” he said.
The calls made by the leader of the opposition echoes similar calls made by the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) and two senior Tory MPs Baroness Sayida Warsi and Lord Sheikh Mohamed.
The umbrella organization, representing over 500 Islamic institutions across the U.K., wrote an open letter last week calling for an investigation on Tory members whose actions surmounted to Islamophobia.
Home Secretary Sajid Javid, in response to the MCB, denied these allegations and accused the council of having links to extremism, telling the BBC they “do not represent Muslims in this country”.
Javid’s comments brought a stern response from the MCB who said the home secretary had chosen to “shoot the messenger in the foot” rather than address their “serious concerns”.
