An expert tells Press TV that former British foreign minister Boris Johnson’s insulting comments about Muslim women wearing burqa was a deliberate attempt to reach out to the racists and fascists in the United Kingdom.
Masoud Shadjareh, head of the Britain-based Islamic Human Rights Commission, said Saturday that Johnson had a political objective to realize with a this week commentary in the Daily Telegraph in which he likened women wearing burqa to letter boxes and bank robbers.
“This was a calculated statement, he is not a fool, he knows he is being provocative,” said Shadjareh, adding, “He has calculated that there are more Islamophobes, there are more xenophobes in our society in the United Kingdom and indeed in Europe than there are Muslims, than there are people who want to create harmonical society.”
He said there are many people in the UK, Europe and in the Western world who are moving towards fascism, saying Johnson is trying to pander to these ideologies.
“So therefore by saying things like this you (are) actually addressing and talking to your own constituency, a group of fascists, racists who want to create a xenophobic society and they will come out and support you,” he said.
Shadjareh said the general expectation was that the UK Conservative Party should have brought Johnson to “disrepute” as his statement about Muslim women had done the same to the party.
“The Conservatives as a government has just given a lip service of sort of saying that his statement is provocative rather than dealing with it as Islamophobe and xnophebic,” said the analyst.
Shajareh said if Johnson had used a similar language against other minorities like members of the Jewish community, the Conservatives would have dealt with him in a much different way. He said such duplicity in dealing with provocative and offensive remarks is a sign that Islamophobia has effectively penetrated the establishment in Britain.
“(It) shows how much Islamophobia and fascism and this sort of policies have infiltrated into ranks and files of not just Conservative Party but whole of the British society,” he said.