Political Islam is already in Britain
by Daniel Dieppe, Artillery Row:
The London Borough of Tower Hamlets is under the full political control of an exclusively Bangladeshi-Islamic male-only political party, called Aspire. Replacing Labour as the party in power in 2022, Aspire shocked the political establishment by winning the local elections with no mainstream support, sectarian campaigning, and a leader, Lutfur Rahman, previously banned from office due to electoral fraud and practicing undue spiritual influence.
The case of the Aspire Party, which only operates in Tower Hamlets, has become increasingly common in multicultural Britain under the increasing influence of Islam. Whilst Muslims make up 6.5 per cent of the total UK population, they account for 40 per cent of the Tower Hamlets population — making it the most Islamic and most Bangladeshi local authority in Britain. Although still unusual, the election of several independent “Pro-Gaza” MPs, the disruption of Parliament and political meetings has alerted political commentators of the increasingly isolated political views of British Muslims from the mainstream. Tower Hamlets, in a sense, is the first British manifestation of such opinion.
The power-grab in Tower Hamlets by an ethno-religious political group has not been without consequence. The Aspire Party has spent twice as much as Labour, largely to the benefit of its own voters. In 2023, The Times revealed that Rahman gave £250,000 for a mosque engagement charity with an annual income of £20,000 chaired by a man who publicly declared that it was important for Islam that Rahman won.
More incriminating is the 2015 court judgment which found Rahman guilty of electoral fraud and undue spiritual influence in the 2014 local elections. No fewer than 101 Imams and Muslim leaders signed a letter to “Make Lutfur Rahman Victorious” before the election, resulting in the first charge of undue spiritual influence since the 19th century. Explaining the judgement, the Judge said Rahman’s career had, “relied on silencing his critics by accusations of racism and Islamophobia … ” and “ … if he had not enlisted the help of the Muslim clergy to put unlawful pressure on Muslim voters, the result would have been very different”. Tower Hamlets contained eight Bengali television channels all entirely supportive of Rahman and there was a very supportive Bangladeshi press. The letter signed by 101 Muslim leaders was only published in Bengali, making it inaccessible to the scrutiny of the English-only-speaking electorate.