The Muslim News - Muslim candidates

Issue 193, Friday 27 May 2005 - 18 Rabi' al-Akhar 1426

Muslim candidates

Sir, It may have been of interest to some of your readers to have had ‘Muslim candidates’ listed by your paper, but I don’t believe this serves the public interest.
Firstly, name profiling is a rather insecure basis for putting my own name to such a list. You have not solicited from me what is my religion or lack thereof, nor have I made this public - quite consistent with privacy of religious belief or lack thereof.
Secondly, you will not have heard me campaign for the votes of Muslims as Muslims. I do, however, campaign for the human rights of everybody, including those of Muslims targeted as Muslims. But little can be inferred from that about my religion, since not only Muslims are interested in human rights.
To the contrary, I have called the targeting of Muslim votes by self-professed Muslim candidates as a socially exclusive and politically discreditable strategy. (The intimidation of a few candidates themselves by a handful of confused young men posing as Islamists is, of course, simply unjust.)
The Green Party has no protocol for determining the religion of its candidates, and I believe we have no desire to establish one. Until or unless we do so, I would be happy to see myself described in any future election as a Green Party candidate, period.
If you insist on producing such a list in future, you might like to review the evidential criteria you use.
Yours,
Shahrar Ali
Recent Parliamentary Candidate
Green Party, London

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