A Sikh lawmaker from Britain recently called for United Kingdom’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson to apologize for the “derogatory and racist remarks” he made last year about Muslim women. Speaking during Johnson’s first formal question-and-answer session in the House of Commons, Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi excoriated the Tory leader for the way he described Muslim women in a newspaper column. In it, Johnson compared women wearing burqas to “letterboxes” or “bank robbers.”
“For those of us who from a young age have had to endure and face up to being called names such as towel-head, or Taliban, or coming from bongo-bongo land, we can fully appreciate the hurt and pain of already vulnerable Muslim women when they are described as looking like bank robbers and letterboxes,” Singh, a Labour Party politician who became the Commons’ first turbaned Sikh in 2017, said before the UK’s Parliament. “So rather than hide behind sham and whitewash investigations, when will the prime minister finally apologize for his derogatory and racist remarks?”
Singh went on to ask the UK’s PM Johnson when he would order an inquiry into Islamophobia in the Conservative Party, noting that it was something he had promised on national television. The comments quickly ignited a round of applause from lawmakers.
Johnson vociferously pushed back against the criticism, arguing that the column in question was a “strong liberal defense” of individuals’ right to wear whatever they’d like in Britain. He also defended the diversity of his Cabinet, before calling on the Labour Party to apologize for the “virus of anti-Semitism that is now rampant in their ranks.”He did not address Singh’s call for an inquiry into Islamophobia.
Johnson faced widespread criticism in 2018 for the column in The Telegraph that deemed the burkha “oppressive” and “ridiculous.” The monitoring organization Tell Mama revealed data this week showing that hate crimes against Muslims rose by 375 percent in the week after the column published, The Guardian reported.
Meanwhile, in Canada, Sikh MPP (Member of Provincial Parliament) from Brampton East, Gurratan Singh denounced Islamophobic remarks made toward him at Muslim Fest. Singh was at the three-day Mississauga event to bring comments about empowering the Muslim community and confronting Islamophobia. Singh said while he was speaking, he noticed a man acting aggressively and shouting. When he left the stage, he saw the man walk through security, lock eyes with him and “effectively beeline” toward him, he said. In a video of the incident posted online, Singh speaks to the man while the man says, “I’m not racist. I’m not racist at all.” The man can be seen asking, “what about sharia? Political Islam? You’re hiding bud. I’ll debate you anytime.” The man in the video was Stephen Garvey, the leader of the National Citizens Alliance, an anti-immigration political party
Singh said in that moment, he thought of a lesson his brother taught him: to always confront racism.”Whenever I am confronted with Islamophobia, my response is not, ‘Yeah I’m not Muslim’, [it’s], ‘Hate is wrong,'” he said in a tweet from his verified Twitter account. He recounted his response to the man: saying “I condemn your racism” and “This has no place in Canada.”
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