The Muslim News - Muslim Londoners remain under-represented

Issue 229, Friday 30 May 2008 - 26 Jumad al-Awwal 1429

Muslim Londoners remain under-represented

By Elham Asaad Buaras

The Capital’s one million Muslims were once again under-represented in the Greater London Assembly (GLA) when it emerged on May 2 that Labour’s Murad Qureshi will remain as the only Muslim representative in the city-wide governing body.
All of the other twenty one Muslim candidates stood in un-winnable seats and 16 of them stood for fringe parties. The result means that the GLA still has a 4% Muslim representation falling well short of the 14% London Muslim population.
With only five Muslim candidates running for the mainstream parties the odds were always against getting the proportionally accurate three Muslim Assembly members.
The Conservatives who pushed Labour into second place failed to list a single Muslim candidate, whilst Labour had two and the Liberal Democrats three. Notably not a single one of the 18 Muslim candidates in the London-wide Assembly was placed first on the list by their respective party.
Newly re-elected Qureshi told The Muslim News that only his Party was serious about “attempting to incorporate members of the ethnic minority and minority faiths.” He said, “Labour elected 2 members of the Asian community, one black man and have 5 women. Compare that with the Conservatives who have one black man and one woman, all the members are of the Christian faith.”
The now London ruling Conservatives confessed they had “work to do” in attracting Muslim candidates. In a statement to The Muslim News a Party spokesperson said, “We would like to see more Conservative Muslims seeking election and we are working very hard to make that happen, notably with the appointment of Sayeeda Warsi as the first Muslim to serve in any Cabinet. In terms of the Parliamentary and Council candidates we have made good progress in selecting people from a broad range of backgrounds and faiths, but there is more work to do.”
Anti-war Party’s Left List and Respect (George Galloway) had the highest number of Muslim candidates contesting seats with a total of 14, eight and six respectively. However both parties failed to win a seat, attaining a combined mere 3.35% of the votes. Left List’s Mukul Hira spoke to The Muslim News about the importance of Muslim representation in the political arena, “If we Muslims were in the government, by numbers we may have stopped the Government killing hundreds of thousands of innocent lives in Iraq. Muslims by voting the Left List say no to 28 days, to 42 days detention without charge, no to ID card, yes to affordable housing, no to Islamophobia and yes to defending civil liberties.”
Commenting on the maiden election of British National Party member, Richard Barnbrook, Qureshi said he had no intention of “personally working with him” but added he is intrigued to see what Barnbrook will say in Assembly meetings about issues like community cohesion. “I will keep an eye on his views and opinions that he expresses. Higher turnout from members of the ethnic minority in the Eastend and Souhall could have kept them out”.
“Basically they added 40,000 votes on top of their 90,000 [votes] last time, to get one member into the assembly.” Speaking about Labour’s performance, Qureshi accentuated the fact his Party had not lost a single seat, made progress in Brent and Harrow and that ousted Mayor Ken Livingstone attainted more votes than he did in 2004. “Ken took full responsibility for his defeat but I disagree. Other national issues came to the fray. Ken had a really progressive agenda on issues like community cohesion, transport and policing.”

MUSLIM CANDIDATES: 25 seats were up for grabs, 14 Constituency seats to represent different areas in London (first past the post) and 11 London-wide seats to represent the city as a whole (proportional representation).

London-wide Assembly Member Muslim candidates & No on list: Labour: Murad Qureshi 2nd & Shafi Khan 14th. Left List: Oliur Rahman 2nd, Rania Khan 3rd, Sait Akgul 6th, Kumar Murshid 8th Muk ul Hira 16th & Sultana Begum 17th. Lib-Dems: Shas Sheehan 8th. Respect: Abdul Sheikh 3rd, Zakaria Abdi 4th, Sabia Kamali 5th, Abdurahman Jafar 6th, Hanif Abdulmuhit 8th & Mohammed Rashid 10th. Unity for Peace & Socialism: Mohammed Khan 5th & Harunor Rashid 8th.

London Assembly Constituency Muslim candidates: Green Party: Shasha Khan. Left List: Zana Hussain, Sait Akgul & Unjum Mirza. Lib-Dems: Shas Sheehan, Rajonuddin Jalal & Farrukh Islam. Respect: Hanif Abdulmuhit. Labour: Shafi Khan & Murad Qureshi.