Great article NS, SOME quotes
The Regressive Left in Sadiq Khan’s Labour Party, and the Populist Right among Trump’s Republicans have made Islam a hot topic. The only way Islam will cease being an issue is when everyone, Muslim or not, is deemed to share the same rights, and is held to the very same liberal expectations.
The Regressive Left’s overuse of the word racism on such matters is as unhelpful as the Populist Right’s overuse of the word “extremist.”
It is as racist to ask these questions, and to have this conversation, as it was when Londoners questioned the white, non-Muslim former Labour mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, about his links to Islamists, or when the press question the white, non-Muslim Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and the maverick white politician George Galloway over their ties to extremists.
"To imply that it is, and to hold Sadiq Khan to a lesser standard than his white colleagues merely because he is a brown Muslim, is the very bigotry of low expectations that fuels identity politics even further"
This reminds me of a comment earlier about " all brown people" .
it goes on about his sharing a platform and more with exremists whilst he himself is not one.
"Khan’s relationships with extremists ran so deep in fact, that he attended events for the jihadist rights group Cage, and wrote a foreword for one of their reports. Cage has since declared ISIS executioner ‘Jihadi-John’ to be a beautiful man live on the BBC.
Khan’s defence of such a prolific flirtation with Islamism is that he was a human rights lawyer. However, most of these events were not attended in his capacity as a lawyer at all. One suspects he was simply trying to gain votes."