Muslim vote (the group, not people generally)

[Noicant]

I was looking at the list of 18 demands from Muslim Vote to Labour and on that list they had

18. Remove the archaic 'spiritual influence' offence from statute.'

I’m not being funny but they want clergy to be able to direct how people vote. Please tell me Labour are going to just ignore this, I’m not sure that many people want their Imam telling them how to vote either, I know if I were Muslim I’d just ignore him.

I have no particular strong feelings about the Israel stuff, it’s to be expected from the group but that one surprised me a bit.

Labour are going to ignore this. HTH.

I know if I were Muslim I’d just ignore him.
No, if you were a Muslim you would not ignore the Iman
And when you state 'I’m not being funny but they want clergy to be able to direct how people vote.', that is wrong. If you read the demand, it is to remove spiritual influence. They want NO spiritual influence on our statute (however, the actual demand makes no sense as we do not know what 'statute' they are referring to as we do not have a written constitution.

Can they afford to ignore it?

I think they are talking about the peddling of spiritual influence during elections as an offence. It’s an offence to spiritually coerce someone to vote a particular way. So your vicar can’t say “vote green or god will hate you”

They are definitely not saying they don’t want any spiritual influence in government given they want muslim students to be able to pray at school and 7% of public sector pensions to be invested in Shariah compliant funds.

Yeah I mean they have to ignore number 18 because that would be bloody awful. You can’t have imamas and priests and rabbis telling people how to vote (I’m sure some do, but not with the state’s approval).

What they mean is that they don’t want Kafir influence on voting.

I am wondering about this tbh. Whether Labour try to claw these voters back or not.

You're misunderstanding.

They're referring to the following offence within section 115 of the Representation of the People Act 1983:“Undue influence(1) A person shall be guilty of a corrupt practice if he is guilty of undue influence.(2) A person shall be guilty of undue influence—(a) if he, directly or indirectly, by himself or by any other person on his behalf, makes use of or threatens to make use of any force, violence or restraint, or inflicts or threatens to inflict, by himself or by any other person, any temporal or spiritual injury, damage, harm or loss upon or against any person in order to induce or compel that person to vote or refrain from voting, or on account of that person having voted or refrained from voting; or(b) if, by abduction, duress or any fraudulent device or contrivance, he impedes or prevents, or intends to impede or prevent, the free exercise of the franchise of an elector or proxy for an elector, or so compels, induces or prevails upon, or intends so to compel, induce or prevail upon, an elector or proxy for an elector either to vote or to refrain from voting."

It's a longstanding provision intended to outlaw priests from putting pressure on their flock to vote a certain way by preaching that "every good Christian/Muslim/Hindu etc should vote for X and if they don't then that's a sin"

The people referred to by the OP are trying to get the clause revoked. It doesn't make them look good tbh.

Yes, they want their religious leaders to be allowed to tell their people how to vote.

@ViscountessMelbourne Thank you!

Never seen it put so bluntly by a campaigning group though. It’s a bit mad.

Someone thinks IABU, if I have misunderstood something about the demand please explain to me why it’s a good thing to allow clergy to direct followers on how to vote using spiritual incentives/threats? I don’t understand how any serious person could support that.

Given the current state of play, and the Tower Hamlets situation, I can't see any risk at all of Labour agreeing to that bit.

Caliphate downloading…

A political party should not be over influenced by any religion. They should listen but pressure groups are not dictating policy. Or where would we be? Political parties have to filter out the ludicrous suggestions. This is one.

Yes they can

Blimey

It didn't take long for islamophobia to raise its ugly head.

Ah yes, Islamophobia… nothing to see here, no threat whatsoever. Oh look, the “far right” squirrel…!

When people on mumsnet are saying well actually a bit of sharia law in Britain would be a rather good thing, you have to wonder just how mainstream terrorism has gone. Not to mention all the useful white idiots praying and chanting allahu Akbar outside universities.

It never does unfortunately
At the moment I just look for the anti islam Thread de jour on here
There are other more subtle posts as well such as the comment on a thread where OP is concerned about the relationship between her DD and Uncle and someone asks if he is Asian due to "concerns about things in the news"
I thought it might calm down after the Mayoral elections but it seems not

"Install one of their own" what does that even mean?

The racists probably don't know how to feel like week with Humzah stepping down but Sadiq being voted in by a majority.