A bolder ambition

Page 37
Q-News, Issue 362
April 2005

Salma Yaqoob is constantly asked, “What’s the point of being part of something small and fringe?” By running for Respect in Birmingham’s Spark Brook and Small Heath constituency, she is hoping to do more than become an MP. She’s hoping to shift the foundation of political debate in Britain.  

All the ‘mainstream’ parties have approached me, and if my only goal were to be a “Muslim woman MP in the House of Commons” there would certainly have been an easier option for me to adopt - both in terms of their brand recognition and their resources.

However, underpinning my decision to partake in electoral politics was, dare I say, a bolder political ambition: to shift the very foundations of what constitutes “mainstream political debate” - across all the parties. The sad reality is, once you take a step back from the clamour and bickering that passes for political debate between the main three parties, they actually have a virtual consensus on almost all the main issues. The choice we have had up till now is the parties of bombing and big business - Labour and Conservative - and the party of reluctant bombing and big business - the Liberal Democrats. For example, on the issue of war in Afghanistan and Iraq all three supported sending the troops and are committed to supporting the occupation of Iraq. All three support the “war on terror”, which has not only fanned the flames of Islamophobia across the globe but also poses a serious threat to world peace and stability.

When I say big business, I don’t mean our corner shops or medium sized businesses. I’m referring to powerful corporations which are not only appeased by governments but who now set the agendas of governments the world over through powerful unelected international bodies such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank (soon to have leading Neo-Con Paul Wolfowitz as its head) and the World Trade Organisation. The fact is that their primary motive is ever-greater profits for corporations. If human beings and the environment suffer as a consequence - then so be it.

Not so long ago the topics of international trade agreements, European Commission and the WTO would have been meaningless to me. I am now shocked at how ignorant I have been - as a justice-loving Muslim, someone who has been educated to a postgraduate level in a free and democratic country - of their role in the misery of not just thousands or even millions, but billions of human beings across our shared planet. It reminds me of the evil of kufr - literally meaning “to cover over the truth.” It also reminds me of the importance of shahadah - to bear witness to the truth.

It is shocking that in our world of plenty, the majority of daily human deaths - 30,000 - are poverty related and preventable. That’s ten 9/11s everyday. Where is the shock and outcry? The real threat to mankind today is not terrorism; it is the inhumane and unjust economic system that has a stranglehold on the world.

From farmers in Africa being driven to ruin by multinational agribusiness to television audiences watching ‘news’ broadcast by channels owned by a handful of ‘media moguls’, the reach of these corporations is frightening. No wonder the mainstream parties do not challenge it. Indeed all three have decided that pandering to this unjust economic system is the easiest course for them. Indeed they vie with each other to demonstrate that they can serve it best - like pimps they are happy to sell off the assets of their own country and exploit their own people to service corporations for short term personal political gain.

That’s why for me - as a Muslim, as a British citizen, as a human being - if any real change is going to come about, whether it’s addressing the poverty gap, environmental disaster, the brutality of war and occupation, pension rights, the erosion of the national health service or the removal of student grants, I have to be part of challenging the causes of the problem. Unfortunately, there is no shortcut to this, and it inevitably means challenging the powerful status quo which constitutes the very same mainstream that we, as Muslims who are a minority in this country, are also keen to join and influence. 

The Quran reminds us: “O you who believe stand up firmly for justice, even though it be against yourselves, or your parents, or your kin; be he rich or poor.”  Indeed combating injustice and oppression always involves a struggle. In the words of the former slave and abolitionist Fredrick Douglass: “If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favour freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without ploughing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning… Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

And let’s not forget that ‘Islamic justice’ is not just about an emotional response to Palestine, Iraq and Kashmir, but suffering and inequality wherever it is.

The two most significant challenges to this menu of war and greater corporate power has come, not from within the mainstream parties, but from without. Iraq continues to dominate the political agenda in Britain. This has very little nothing to do with opposition inside the Labour Party, for example, where Blair’s control remains fixed. It is almost solely due to the extra-parliamentary pressure applied by the anti-war movement.

The same applies to the issue of international debt relief. The main reason Britain has a better record on this issue than other G8 governments is due to public pressure - notably the Jubilee 2000. The Make Poverty History campaign planned to coincide with the G8 summit in Scotland in July is the latest chapter in applying that pressure.

These struggles for social justice, at home and abroad, could be even more effective if they were given an electoral expression. The democratic deficit between the aspirations most people have as to the kind of world they would rather live and the reality of the political representation they receive in Westminster is wide.

Respect aims to bridge that gap. Respect is deepening that pressure on the mainstream by providing a challenge at the ballot box. The combination of extra-parliamentary and parliamentary action together can act as a powerful pincer.  The response to our campaigning has already been phenomenal.  The real prize though is not just a few crumbs at the political table, but a shift in the very framework of political debate.