News and Analysis on Islam in Europe and North America
March 2012 Bradford, which is host to a large Asian community, has been a Labour Party stronghold for 100 years. However, in the Bradford West by-election George Galloway, the outspoken British politician, gained a landslide victory against Labour’s Pakistani Muslim candidate Imran Hussain, thanks to the unwavering support of the Asian Muslim community.
14 May 2012 Bradford accommodates the third highest percentage of South Asians in the UK. So-called ‘Muslim votes’ make up 45% of the constituency’s population, and thus these votes are crucial for any political party that wants to score a victory in the elections. Political experts were taken by surprise when George Galloway
George Galloway has proved that he has the charisma, the celebrity and the message to appeal to the young, the disillusioned and the angry particularly in the Muslim community. His victory is the first time an independent or smaller party candidate has won a parliamentary by-election from another party in Britain since March 1973, when
06.07.2011 Islamic extremists affiliated to the Muslims Against Crusades (MAC) group, which was set up in 2010, called on British Muslims to establish three independent states with sharia law within the UK. They named Bradford, Dewsbury and Tower Hamlets as “testbeds for blanket sharia law”, which would operate entirely outside British law, the Daily Mail
24.05.2011 Bradford has appointed the UK’s first Muslim woman to hold a Lord Mayor title. Coun Naveeda Ikram, of Pakistani origin and born in the UK, had been a Labour councillor on the Bradford Council since 2004. In addition to being the UK’s first female Muslim Lord Mayor, she was also the first woman of