MCB expresses shock at Home Secretary for endorsing an extremist at dispatch box

Speaking before the Commons on last month, the Home Secretary Suella Braverman delivered a statement on the Prevent strategy, in which she categorised the hard-right polemicist Douglas Murray’s views as “mainstream Conservative commentary.”

Douglas Murray’s objectively racist, extremely Islamophobic assertions are a matter of public record, the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) informs. He has said: “conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board”, called Islam an “opportunist infection”, Muslims a “demographic time bomb” & that mosques should be “pulled down,” as documented in his notorious ‘What are we to do about Islam?’ speech.

According to MCB, so profound is Murray’s Islamophobia that a former colleague of his has described him as a “thoroughly nasty piece of work full of venom and hatred for Muslims”, as someone who has a “perverse & deranged obsession with all things Islam related.”

The MCB said it previously called on the Conservative Party to take firm action against the radical right-wing extremism now infecting its ranks, following Ministerial participation in the alarmingly divisive National Conservatism Conference in May of this year. It was at their 2023 conference that the Home Secretary first endorsed Murray. The National Conservatism Conference, in turn, has form in courting controversy by inviting far-right figures, so much so that in 2020, the Conservative Party censured one of its MPs for attending.

Commenting, Zara Mohammed, Secretary-General of the Muslim Council of Britain, said:

“Let there be no doubt: Murray’s views are anything but mainstream; they are extreme and violently Islamophobic. That the Home Secretary would defend Murray’s views as “mainstream”, this time at the dispatch box no less, is as outrageous as it is dangerous.

“Once again, we call upon one and all, including Conservatives themselves, to stand and be counted against such alarming divineness, attempts to mainstream the unconscionable.”