Anglican Mainstream

She is deemed to be the most powerful female Muslim in the UK: she is certainly the most powerful Muslim of either gender in the Conservative Party. Her Labour co-religionists have been in no doubt as to why she was elevated to the peerage and promoted straight to the Shadow Cabinet, and they may have a point.

But Baroness Warsi’s walkabout in Luton, during which she was pelted with eggs (haram), is interesting on a number of levels.

Her assailants were all male, and they accused her of not being a ‘proper’ Muslim and of supporting the murder of her fellow Muslims in Afghanistan.

By ‘proper’, of course, they mean she is not concealed beneath a burka, or even a hijab, and she does not agree with their particular interpretation of the Qur’an. One only has to see the arrogant incredulity on the face of the tall bearded one when she mentions ‘the prophet Mohammed’. It is as if she has no right to even utter the name: she is blaspheming by daring to even mention him to male Muslims. And his persistent question ‘Do you represent shari’a?’ was designed to ensnare. They did not want a discussion: there is no debate to be had. For this brand of disreputable Islam, there is one truth and then the sword.

Or the egg.

Politicians are used to being pelted with foodstuffs, splattered with paint, given pies in the face and generally abused. This has been the case for thousands of years. But increasingly in the United Kingdom we are quite literally seeing them threatened with physical violence – even the sword – and one wonders how long it will be before one can only consult one’s MP behind a screen of toughened glass.

When Jack Straw dared to question the burka in Blackburn, he undoubtedly angered some of his constituents. When Ann Cryer in Keighley questioned the treatment of women and children in mosques, she was reviled. When Paul Goodman attempted to calm the Muslims of Wycombe after the plot to bring down transatlantic airliners, he found himself tiptoeing on eggshells.

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