LONDON: The newly announced London mayoral candidate for the right-wing British party Reform UK faced criticism on Friday following comments suggesting women wearing the burqa should be subject to police stop-and-search, The Guardian newspaper reported.<\/p>\n
Speaking on a podcast, Laila Cunningham said that in an \u201copen society\u201d people should not cover their faces, adding that it \u201chas to be assumed\u201d those who do so are doing it \u201cfor a criminal reason.\u201d<\/p>\n
She also argued that London should have \u201cone civic culture\u201d which \u201cshould be British,\u201d claiming parts of the British capital felt culturally different due to the visibility of Muslim communities.<\/p>\n
The remarks prompted concern from Muslim organizations, with Shaista Gohir, chief executive of the Muslim Women\u2019s Network UK, describing the comments as \u201cdangerous\u201d and a \u201cdog whistle\u201d that could further alienate Muslim women.<\/p>\n
She warned they risked emboldening abuse, adding: \u201cThe number of Muslim women who wear the burqa in this country is tiny, and yet this is what has been chosen as a focus.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gohir said her organisation had recently seen a rise in threatening and Islamophobic correspondence, arguing that Cunningham\u2019s comments were \u201csending a message to Muslims that they do not belong.\u201d<\/p>\n
Afzal Khan, a Labour MP based in Manchester, called Cunningham\u2019s comments a \u201cdeliberate and cynical ploy\u201d, adding it was \u201cabout divisive ideas being pumped into the society deliberately for electoral benefits.\u201d<\/p>\n
London Mayor Sadiq Khan also criticized attempts to stoke division, saying that the role of mayor was to bring communities together.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlmost without argument, our city is the greatest city in the world because of our diversity,\u201d he said, adding that freedom of religion and expression were \u201cquintessentially British rights.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cunningham, a former Crown Prosecution Service prosecutor and British-born Muslim, was confirmed as Reform UK\u2019s London mayoral candidate last week.<\/p>\n
The issue of face coverings has previously sparked internal debate within Reform, with senior figures having distanced the party from earlier calls for a burqa ban.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LONDON: The newly announced London mayoral candidate for the right-wing British party Reform UK faced criticism on Friday following comments suggesting women wearing the burqa should be subject to police stop-and-search, The Guardian newspaper reported. Speaking on a podcast, Laila Cunningham said that in an \u201copen society\u201d people should not cover their faces, adding that …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":92369,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92352"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92370,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92352\/revisions\/92370"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}