Johnson in hot waters over ?racist, Islamophobic? views

[ahlam1399]

LONDON: Prime Minister Boris Johnson has ended up in hot waters after his “deeply racist and offensive” columns from years earlier emerged, with an activist terming him to be an “unfit” leader.The co-convener of British pressure group Unite Against Fascism (or Stand Up to Racism), Weyman Bennett, said Johnson’s words were “deeply racist and offensive”.“Boris Johnson is unfit to be a prime minister that represents the entire United Kingdom,” Bennett said, adding: “He had demonstrated this by lying and falsely representing black, Asian and different communities inside this country. This is deeply offensive and unforgivable and should not be ignored and he should be held to account.”The Premier has been facing a storm of accusations of Islamophobia and racism after the revelation of new articles wherein he has called Islam and Muslims a problem and attacked Nigerian people, women, and working-class people.The new columns emerged after the chancellor, Sajid Javid, earlier this week refused at least seven times to say whether he would use the terms “bank robber” or “letterbox” to describe Muslim women who wear a burka, as Johnson did last year.Naz Shah, Labour’s shadow minister for women and equalities, noted that Johnson’s words were extremely offensive and dangerous, calling on him to explain his position.She claimed: “Boris Johnson’s Conservatives are deliberately ignoring the racism that infects their party from top to bottom because dealing with it would mean acknowledging the Prime Minister’s guilt and the discriminatory impact of their policies in government.”Former Conservative cabinet minister, Sayeeda Warsi, said Muslim women were attacked after Johnson called them “letterboxes”. In an interview, she said: “We saw that when Boris made those crass comments around Muslim women wearing niqab, that many Muslim women — visibly Muslim women — were subsequently attacked on our streets.“In fact, a government funded organisation reported the increase in hate crime towards visibly Muslim women as a result of those comments.”“I think what I would be saying to the Prime Minister is to think again. Think about the words that your views, not just in relation to Muslim communities but in terms of describing gay communities and black communities and other communities … think about those words that you use because those words have consequences and not the kind of words which really are fitting for a Prime Minister of this country.”Warsi also raised concerns about the views of senior government figures, telling the Guardian that she has “no doubt” that senior Tory leader Michael Gove — who wrote a controversial book in 2006 called Celsius 7/7 about Islamism in the UK — was Islamophobic.“I think Michael’s view is there is no such thing as a non-problematic Muslim. I think that in his world there’s an extremist lurking behind anyone who professes to be connected to Islam or Muslims in any way shape or form,” she said.http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/com/cwEr/~4/i4dzKryZY5E

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