Sunday, May 06, 2007

Islam TV “Question time” with Muslim Friends of Labour


This afternoon I was invited to attend the Newham Launch of “Muslim Friends of Labour” (MFL) at Minhaj Ul-Qur'an International Mosque, Forest Gate, London E7. Cabinet Minster and local MP, Stephen Timms, Chief Secretary Treasury, was the guest speaker.

Firstly, there was a series of speeches. Stephen (see picture) spoke on the “The importance of Muslim engagement in local politics”. He reflected on the harm caused by the Iraq War to the relationship between the Labour Party and the Muslim community. However, he pointed out that the recent Council elections, although not brilliant for Labour, showed that extremist fringe groups such as Respect were a “spent force” and that the Labour Party, was the only natural home of Muslims in Britain.

Dr Zulfikar Ali (Chair of MFL and local Cllr) spoke on the” advantages of engagement". As someone who was very much opposed to the war, he did recognise the support Labour had given the Muslim community and that while surveys had shown that Muslims were committed to Britishness (far more than other new communities) their needs have to be recognised by society .

Shiraz Ahmed spoke on the vision and goals of MFL. He gave a very personal speech about what it is like to grow up in East London as a British Muslim. Also, that being on the political fringe doesn’t change anything; you have to belong to the mainstream. He thought that MFL could help bridge the gap between grassroots Muslim opinion and the Labour Party.

An extremely eloquent speaker (whose name I did not catch) spoke on behalf of Lyn Brown MP, who had to give her apologies. Lyn’s speech concentrated on how the key Labour Party values of Social Justice, Equity and Equality are reflected in Islamic values. Despite the “elephant in the room” (Iraq) no other Party has done so much for Muslim communities.

So far pretty interesting stuff, next Islam TV had organised a “Question Time” debate. The panel was Stephen, Zulfikar and Clive Furnace (local Cllr and a founder member of the campaign against repression and for democratic rights in Iraq (Cardri) who visited Iraqi Kurdistan several times in the 90s). BEN TV a poplar African cable station was also filming.

I could go on about the Q&A, but what I found really inspiring is that people were gathered together talking about emotive and divisive issues such as Iraq, Faith schools, Labour Party foreign policy and how to prevent Muslim youths being attracted to extremists in a wide ranging, intelligent, polite and informative debate. It was interesting that this discussion took place in Forest Gate, only 10 minutes walk away from the potentially disastrous Police raid and shooting last year. I think things are moving on.

Apparently the debate will be shown on Wednesday 9 May (channel 813 on Sky - Free) Islam TV.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Interesting article John. There's quite a few Islamic based TV initiatives popping out in western countries, for example: http://www.info-express.org/free-online-islamic-and-arabic-tv

They really give a different view as opposed the usual news.