close
Thursday March 28, 2024

London Mayor admits he failed to engage with Muslims

LONDON: Conservative candidate and incumbent London Mayor Boris Johnson admitted that he failed to e

By Murtaza Ali Shah
April 29, 2012
LONDON: Conservative candidate and incumbent London Mayor Boris Johnson admitted that he failed to engage enough with nearly half a million Muslim Londoners during his 4-years stint in the office.
The admission came from the most popular Tory politician at his meeting with representatives of more than 50 mosques at the Regents Park Mosque - Islamic Cultural Centre — here.
Boris Johnson, a columnist for many Tory-supporting daily and weekly publications, also apologised - and retracted - his article he wrote for the Spectator magazine in which he asked to change Islam to be compatible with “British values and loyalty to Britain”.
Johnson said he believed Islam was a religion of peace and he should not have written that article and the decision to write that article was not “judicious”. He described himself as a defender of faiths and said his own great grandfather was a Muslim who had arrived in Britain a 100 years ago fleeing persecution. He blamed his critics for misrepresenting and twisting that article to attack him.
Johnson criticised the European Court on Human Rights (ECHR) ruling on British Pakistani Babar Ahmed’s extradition to the USA and called for the British Muslim’s trial in a UK court.
He said the ECHR’s ruling was an infringement upon the rights of British citizens who are only accused of crimes not committed in the USA, adding that British nationals should only be tried “under the judicial system in this country. They should not be sent to the US when the UK courts are capable of adjudicating the mater here”.
Johnson told the participants he wanted to be re-elected to continue his agenda of creating more jobs in London, put more police on the streets to make Londoner feel safer, to regenerate and encourage more entrepreneurship. He said under him in 4 years the crime rate had gone down dramatically because his approach of increasing the number of police -including ethnic minority police officers - was the rights approach.
The former head of Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) Sir Iqbal Sacranie criticised Boris Johnson for not engaging with British Muslim organisations, sidelining the key stakeholders, while engaging more with Jewish and Hindu communities. Johnson agreed in his reply that he could have done more to engage with the Muslim communities but said that the Olympics preparations and post-riots London kept him too busy to concentrate on other matters. But he promised that he will hold regular sessions with Muslims in the future and will hear and speak more with them. He touted himself as the candidate who had the skill and power to get more funds from the central government to spend on London’s development. He thought his re-election is vital to keep the crimes down and keep more police on the streets.
Chris Graylings MP, considered a long-standing friend of the Muslim community, appealed to tens of thousands of Muslim Londoners to come out on 3rd May and vote for Boris Johnson. He said that Muslim were playing a great contribution in the development of this country and their contribution must be recognised at all levels.