One Society Many Cultures is deeply shocked by the recent comments by a senior member of Birmingham City Council suggesting fellow Cllr Salma Yaqoob would ‘applaud’ suicide bombers and wishes to introduce Sharia law ‘with hands cut off and stonings’.
These comments are not only a slander on Salma Yaqoob, who has a long and admirable record of opposing extremism from any source while eloquently arguing her own views as a British Muslim woman, but they are the type of comments normally associated with the far right. Such comments whip up community hatred, fear and prejudice as well as encouraging the targeting of Salma herself by right wing extremists.

These comments add to an already rising atmosphere of Islamophobia, encouraged by PM David Cameron’s weekend calls to end funding for even moderate Muslim groups that do not subscribe to his version of ‘muscular liberalism’. This gratuitously offensive attack on Salma feeds all those forces that seek to delegitimise Islam in its entirety and imply that all Muslims are potential terrorists. This isolates and demonises the Muslim communities, undermines community cohesion and creates an environment where extremism is more likely to flourish.
Robust political debate is essential. But such inflammatory slurs have no place in our political dialogue, they simply whip up Islamophobia and racism and create the circumstances where these can lead to violence, intimidation and fear.