“Scotland is an open and diverse country.” A sentence that I, and many others, have repeated many times. This is true, but we shouldn’t allow this expression of pride to turn into a Scottish exceptionalism – a belief that somehow bad things only happen elsewhere.
Sharing my personal experiences of everyday racism and Islamophobia, as I did earlier this week with the Daily Record, has possibly been one of the hardest things I’ve done for so many different reasons: its impact on my family, the inevitable social media backlash, the hesitancy in highlighting my own difference and the subconscious desire to be accepted as equal and “normal”.
I believe the majority of people see past a person’s colour and religion. But we must accept that that everyday racism and Islamophobia exists.
This view has been cemented in the last few days. Since the interview, I have been inundated with heartbreaking individual stories. This includes a young woman who had her hijab ripped off her head at the underground station, a child scared to go to school because he is called a terrorist, a hotel worker regularly racially abused but told by their boss that the customer comes first and a council worker who is convinced that he missed out on the promotion at work because of the colour of his skin and religion.
Almost all of those who shared their stories expressed the belief that the barriers were too big to overcome. They felt unable or scared to speak out – they thought they wouldn’t be listened to, that they wouldn’t be believed, that they wouldn’t be taken seriously, or worse still, that they may face consequences. In the case of children or teenagers, that could mean their parents worrying or not letting them go out.
This is why, in every conversation, I have emphasised that this is bigger than any one individual or organisation. This is about a culture that is impacting on workplaces, campuses and classrooms across the country.
On Tuesday, we launched the Cross Party Group on Tackling Islamophobia. It was supported by all political parties and more than 50 organisations.
We heard some pretty stunning statistics from researchers. Police Scotland has the fourth highest number of recorded Islamophobic hate crimes of all the police authorities across the UK. That 55 per cent of Muslim schoolchildren in Edinburgh recorded experiencing some form of Islamophobia. That 45 per cent of Muslim schoolchildren feared going to school the day after a terrorist attack. The gendered nature of the abuse with a clear majority of incidents affecting women, particularly those that wear a hijab.
What right does any man have to tell any women what she can or can’t wear? What a woman chooses to wear, how she chooses to express herself, how she chooses to present herself – either in public or private – is the individual choice and right of that woman.
I reflect on the experiences of the generation before mine, and what progress has been made in the last 20 years. I recall being assaulted in 1997 because of the colour of my skin. I recall being in the city centre of Glasgow with my friends on a Saturday evening and having glass bottles thrown at us because of the colour of our skin. I recall streets that we knew not to walk down because of the likelihood of a racial attack. I think we have moved on incredibly from that time (though undoubtedly individual incidences will occur). But I fear that everyday racism and Islamophobia has now become more insidious and more instituionalised.
As the Labour party – a political movement born out of the desire to fight for equality, to defeat prejudice and to end injustice – we must hold ourselves to a higher standard.
So, if we accept that there is everyday sexism, homophobia, racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and more in wider society, then we must also accept, as a party reflective of society, that we too are not immune to it.
In the Daily Record interview, I described how, when I was running for the Scottish Labour leadership in the autumn of 2017, a Labour councillor told me he couldn’t support me because of my religion and ethnicity (in more offensive terms), and a longstanding Labour member told me she would not vote for me because my wife chose to wear a hijab. The comments made to me can’t be unique.
Those words that I heard were said to my father 20 years ago when he first stood for election to be Britain’s first Muslim MP. I thought we had moved on and would never hear them again. Sadly not.
In our entire history as a party, in Scotland we have only elected two black or minority ethnic MPs and two BAME MSPs. Two being the same person, and two of the three being from the same family. We can and must do better. That’s why in the coming days I will be outlining what steps I believe the Scottish Labour party should be taking to lead by example. I will also be sharing measures the Scottish government can take to challenge this culture head on. Because it is in all of our interest to defeat prejudice regardless of gender, sexuality, race or religion.
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