The snap election in the United Kingdom has long been one of the leading stories in world news, as its outcome will determine the fate of the increasingly tedious but no less significant Brexit. Now that it has become clear that the decisive supporters of Britain’s exit from the EU, led by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, have won a convincing victory, this intrigue has disappeared and only the technical details of this process remain of interest.
As far as Muslims are concerned, it also affects them in one way or another. «Voice of Islam has written several times about the attitudes of the two main opposing parties — the Conservative and Labour parties — towards Muslims in the United Kingdom as well as towards various Muslim countries and the foreign policies they pursue.
For example, Boris Johnson has been accused of Islamophobia in Britain, particularly for his inappropriate remarks about women wearing niqabs, but his victory was celebrated in Turkey — not only because of his Ottoman heritage, but also because of his pro-Turkish foreign policy. His main rival, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, positioned himself as a defender of British Muslims, and many of their votes went to him. However, he not only opposes the UK’s arms trade with Turkey or Saudi Arabia, but also supports putting pressure on them for human rights violations, in addition to being a consistent lobbyist for the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party. So everything is complicated…
But there is another aspect to this story, a non-standard one, so to speak. In every sense. That is, the aspect of attitudes towards people with «non-traditional orientations». This is not a new problem, and all the major political parties in Britain have their position on relations with Muslims, as well as with this category of society. And usually these are two separate issues that can only intersect when it comes to talking about «homophobia» among Muslims and their intolerance.
This time, however, Boris Johnson decided to combine the two issues into one by appointing a member of parliament who is now being presented as «the world’s first openly gay Muslim member of parliament» — Imran Ahmad Khan. Of course, the myth of an «openly gay Muslim» is debunked when one looks closely at this «product» or even just reads the «label». After all, if one were to call this «gentleman» open about anything, it would not be about being a Muslim (since a person who considers unanimously forbidden acts as permissible cannot be a Muslim in principle), but rather about being an Ahmadi.
It has already been clarified on several occasions that Ahmadis who consider the founder of their doctrine, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, to be a prophet, thereby violating the seal of Muhammad (peace be upon him), are not Muslims. Whether an Ahmadiyya can find homosexuality normal is certainly an interesting question, but strictly speaking it has nothing to do with Muslims.
What does concern Muslims is the clear political choice of their representative in Parliament in the form of this «gentleman». It is particularly significant for Johnson, who, judging by himself and his previous statements, does not consider a woman in a niqab to be an acceptable representation of a Muslim in Britain, but a «man of non-traditional orientation». Of course, by making this choice, Johnson is challenging Muslims. But not because he is sending a gay representative from his party to Parliament — because the majority of British Muslims are realists and understand perfectly well that they live in a society in which this category is a full part of it, so there is no reason to be surprised by its presence in Parliament.
The challenge for Muslims in this case is that this gay man is effectively being presented as a representative of Muslims, even though everyone knows that declaring such an orientation is, to put it mildly, not popular in the British Muslim community. But if the Islamophobia of British conservatives is once again confirmed in this way, the same cannot be said of the name they bear — conservatives.
Boris Johnson has brought 24 openly gay people into the parliament, which the media has already called «Boris’s babies», making this composition the «gayest parliament in the world». If this is the choice of the British people, what can be said except that conservatism and conservative values have nothing to do with it? In reality, as many insightful commentators have noted, it is actually Muslims who are the true conservatives and adherents of values closest to classical British values in Britain today.
Apparently, this is what bothers those who, under the guise of conservatism, pursue policies that are completely alien to the spirit of conservatism. (Photo: Boris Johnson and his «baby» Imran Ahmad Khan)