Mohammed Amin: Immigration is not a racial issue today

Mohammed Amin is Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Muslim Forum. He is writing in a personal capacity. Follow Mohammed on Twitter.

For several decades, racists who thought it politically incorrect to attack people for being black or brown instead protested about “immigration”, and wanted to send immigrants “back where they came from”. This desire to repatriate applied irrespective of whether the black or brown person in question was actually an immigrant or someone who had been born in Britain. Such details did not matter, since what the racists were really against was the idea that Britons could be anything other than people with white skins, preferably of Anglo-Saxon origin.

While racists can be found in all political parties, it is a historical fact that every significant piece of legislation promoting racial equality was enacted by Labour governments, usually over Conservative opposition. Meanwhile from time to time some Conservative politicians would come out with speeches making it clear that they would rather people like me left the country, if necessary with the assistance of a repatriation grant. While such racist policies never became official Conservative policy, we had enough such people within our party to ruin our brand with most people from an ethnic minority background. That is why even today if someone is from an ethnic minority, even if they are highly educated or rich, they are much more likely to vote Labour than vote Conservative. If you have not already read it, I recommend Lord Ashcroft's report "Degrees of Separation."

Mohammed Amin: Don't shoot the messenger who reports on anti-Muslim hatred

Mohammed Amin is Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Muslim Forum. He is writing in a personal capacity. Follow Mohammed on Twitter.

Britain’s leading anti-Muslim hatred body is modelled on, and assisted by, the Jewish-run Community Security Trust – yet the CST rarely suffers the media assaults faced recently by Tell MAMA.

For many decades the British Jewish community has sadly suffered from verbal abuse, physical assaults, and criminal damage to community institutions. That is why the Community Security Trust (CST), a registered charity, was set up 19 years ago to advise Jewish organisations on physical security and organise volunteer marshals to protect synagogue services and Jewish community events.

Mohammed Amin: Calling terrorists jihadis helps them

Mohammed Amin is Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Muslim Forum. He is writing in a personal capacity. Follow Mohammed on Twitter.

We all like conciseness. The ideal is a short name such as "Higgs boson" that specifies exactly what you mean, and which conveys that precise meaning to everyone who hears the name. However in politics names are rarely as precise and the same words can mean very different things to different listeners. Accordingly some words can be very damaging to use.

I want to explain why we should never call people such as the Woolwich killers or the insurgents in Mali "jihadis" or "jihadists".

Mohammed Amin: A Government register of hate preachers

Mohammed Amin is Vice Chairman of the Conservative Muslim Forum. He is writing in a personal capacity. Follow Mohammed on Twitter.

We are a country that rightly values freedom of speech. Accordingly there will be many people who make remarks on public platforms which are far beyond the bounds of acceptability in a pluralistic society while not being remarks that constitute criminal offenses.

As a result, the following story recurs periodically in the press:

Mr X who has a track record of divisive hate-filled speeches has spoken to an audience on the premises of Organisation Y. When challenged, Organisation Y responds that it knew nothing of Mr X’s record and reminds everyone that it does not have the resources to assess the histories of the many people who are invited to speak on its premises.

Such stories will continue to recur until some action is taken. What is required is a list of people regarded as unacceptable hate preachers that an organisation such as Y can use to check against the names of proposed speakers on its premises. Such a list would have other potential uses. For example:

• The Charity Commission might wish to review whether persons on the list were fit and proper persons to be trustees of charities.
• The Home Office might look particularly closely at foreigners on the list if they apply to be admitted to the UK.

No private sector organisation could maintain such a list. Including Mr X’s name on the list would immediately create exposure to a libel action. Defending such a libel action would involve playing with fire, given the exposure to heavy costs and the payment of damages. I believe that the Government however could give itself statutory exemption from libel claims, and it is therefore the right party to maintain such a list.

The broad operations of such a register are outlined below.

Mohammed Amin: In praise of ethnic monitoring

Mohammed Amin is Vice Chairman of the Conservative Muslim Forum. He is writing in a personal capacity.

Ethnic monitoring means the keeping of ethnicity statistics regarding employees, job applicants, or in certain cases the users of public services. Statistics may also be collected on the basis of religion or other characteristics, but for conciseness I just use “ethnic monitoring in this piece. From time to time I see occasional complaints about ethnic monitoring as being wasteful or “political correctness gone mad.” Accordingly I want to explain why I support it.

How it is done

Most large employers will ask job applicants, as part of the application process, to self-classify under one or more criteria, such as ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation. There is no attempt to audit the self-classification. Critically, the applicant is almost invariably offered the option “prefer not to disclose” for each separate criterion.

This data is then stored by the employer. Subsequent analysis allows the employer to assess whether discrimination might be happening in its recruitment processes.

Mohammed Amin: Blasphemy should remain decriminalised

Mohammed Amin is Vice Chairman of the Conservative Muslim Forum. He is writing in a personal capacity.

After the furore sparked by the uploading to YouTube of a 14 minute excerpt from the film “The Innocence of Muslims”, there have been many calls around the world for the film to be banned. These are often accompanied by demands for stronger legislation against material which offends people’s religious beliefs. I disagree, and believe that US law with its First Amendment protections for the freedom of speech and freedom of religion gets it right, with Britain being almost as free as America.

Blasphemy law in the UK

Following the publication in the UK of “The Satanic Verses” by Salman Rushdie, many British Muslims were outraged by a perceived insult to Islam. There was an attempt to launch a private prosecution but the magistrate  asked to issue a summons refused to do so. Judicial review was sought but in the case R v Chief Metropolitan Stipendiary Magistrate; Ex parte Choudhury ([1991] 1 All England Law Reports 306) the Divisional Court decided, in the words of Lord Watkins, "We have no doubt that as the law now stands it does not extend to religions other than Christianity ...”

This produced a situation which I regarded as grossly unfair, since Tim Montgomerie’s religion was protected against blasphemy while mine wasn’t. Accordingly, either blasphemy protection needed extending to other religions, or it needed to be removed from Christianity. Parliament made the correct choice when the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 s.79 abolished the common law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel, and also dropped references to blasphemous libel in the Criminal Libel Act 1819 and the Law of Libel Amendment Act 1888.

Since then, we have had a level playing field amongst religions in the UK with none of them being protected against blasphemy.

Mohammed Amin: The corporate duty to avoid tax

Mohammed Amin is Vice Chairman of the Conservative Muslim Forum. He is writing in a personal capacity.

A few years ago I found myself chatting with a very senior official in HM Revenue and Customs. I mischievously asked him “Would you agree that it is the duty of directors of public companies to ensure that their company avoids as much tax as possible?”

Needless to say the anonymous official did not agree. However I do not recall any coherent rebuttal from him.

In some cases, I think “No” is the correct answer. For example:

1. Avoiding tax should never be allowed to interfere with business efficiency. Sometimes businesses enter into excessively complex structures not justified by the tax saving. If saving £1 of tax reduces your pre-tax profits by £1.50 then you have done something stupid!
2. Some businesses which sell to individual consumers trade upon a reputation for being particularly socially conscious, ecologically aware, fluffy or cuddly. If such a business acquires the reputation of a “tax avoider”, it may lead to some individual consumers taking their business elsewhere, to the extent that the loss of business outweighs the saving in tax.
3. A large part of the company’s sales may be to the Government, which decides to punish the tax avoider by choosing another supplier.

Apart from similar cases, in my opinion the directors of a public company do have a duty to ensure that their company avoids as much tax as it sensibly can.

Mohammed Amin: How much tax is enough?

Mohammed Amin is Vice Chairman of the Conservative Muslim Forum. He is writing in a personal capacity.

Over a decade ago I had an epiphany.

As a partner in PricewaterhouseCoopers, once a year I received a statement informing me how much I had earned in the previous accounting year. (Partners do not know their income until the firm has calculated its profits and then calculated the division of the profits amongst the partners.) That statement also told me how much income tax I was paying on my profit share.

At that time my late brother-in-law was living on social security. I did not know how much the DHSS was paying him but could guess. It dawned on me that my income tax bill represented several times the amount of his social security payments; say a multiple of five.

Both common humanity and my Muslim religious belief lead me to care about social solidarity. I might fall on hard times for many reasons, and also understand in the case of every unfortunate citizen “There but for the grace of God go I.” Accordingly I support our social security safety net, while wholeheartedly backing Iain Duncan Smith’s improvements to the system.

However the question I asked myself when looking at my PwC income and tax statement was “When have I done enough for social solidarity?” How many people's total social security do I need to finance before I have done enough for my fellow citizens? In other words “How much tax is enough?”

Mohammed Amin: A land fit for billionaires

Mohammed Amin is Vice Chairman of the Conservative Muslim Forum. He is writing in a personal capacity.

Meet Rupert from Ruritania. Rupert was born into a moderately wealthy family of Ruritanian cotton growers but with his business acumen has taken the family cotton business international as well as diversifying into other areas such as commodity trading, casinos and shipping. His business interests are now estimated to be worth about £20 billion. In addition he owns a diversified portfolio of investments, mainly quoted shares and bonds, worth about £2 billion, and also owns residences in many of the world’s more attractive cities including London.

Rupert is on good terms with the Ruritanian government but considers the country unstable. Accordingly all of his non-Ruritanian business interests are held through international trusts to avoid expropriation by Ruritania if the government changes. Similarly all of his liquid investments and cash are outside Ruritania.

Rupert and his wife both like London and a few years ago started spending most of their time here. Apart from anything else, the weather in Ruritania is awful! All three of their children are attending high quality, although rather expensive, public schools. Rupert’s wife likes shopping here, and is active on the London charity scene while Rupert himself concentrates on his business interests. For him the many attractions of London include high quality accountants, lawyers, trust experts, actuaries, consulting engineers and corporate financiers. While he regards such professionals as overpriced, he values their skills and makes extensive use of their services in his international business interests. He also uses London based asset managers to take care of his investment portfolio.

Mohammed Amin: Islamophobia – a trap for unwary Muslims

Mohammed Amin is Vice Chairman of the Conservative Muslim Forum. He is writing in a personal capacity.

There are some statements with which almost everyone in our society agrees:

• Every citizen in our country should have the same civil and legal rights.
• Everyone should be able to walk down the street without fearing being beaten up or being spat at.
• Everyone should be free to walk around without having verbal abuse shouted at them.
• Subject to some basic rules about decency and security, everyone should be free to dress as they want.
• Nobody should face discrimination in employment or the provision of goods and services on the grounds of age; disability; gender reassignment; marriage or civil partnership status; pregnancy and maternity; race; religion or belief; sex; or sexual orientation. (This list is an almost verbatim reproduction of the Equality Act 2010 section 4, amended only to permit a grammatical sentence.)

There are a few people, such as racists or religious extremists, who reject some or all of the above rights, but such rejectionist views are generally regarded as being “beyond the pale.”

Mohammed Amin: Paying tax is not a moral issue

Mohammed Amin is Vice Chairman of the Conservative Muslim Forum. He is writing in a personal capacity.

As someone who has spent over 30 years helping taxpayers cope with tax law, I find the current debate about tax avoidance rather facile. As Macaulay wrote, “We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.” It would help if practicing tax advisers participated in the debate, rather than being reluctant to raise their heads above the parapet.

As humans, we choose to band together for our wellbeing. On a small scale we form clubs, and on large scale we form states. Each such organisation requires payments into central funds as a price of membership; clubs call it a membership subscription, states call it taxation. Both exercise sanctions for non-payment, expulsion by the club, imprisonment by the state.

The obligation of the citizen is quite clear. It is to pay all the tax that the law requires. Furthermore, while the state makes the rules, it starts off not knowing your income, and you have a clear obligation to provide the information the state demands by filing a complete and correct tax return. Morality requires you to be truthful, but it is tax law that specifies what you must pay.

Mohammed Amin: Exorcising Enoch Powell’s Ghost

Mohammed Amin is Vice Chairman of the Conservative Muslim Forum. He is writing in a personal capacity.

When I wrote “Winning Muslim Votes” for the Tory Reform Group magazine “Reformer”, I asked why:

“Muslim business owners and professionals who, if they were white Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs) would be expected to vote Conservative but who actually vote Labour despite their wealth and socially conservative attitudes.”

I decided the key reason was a form of collective memory:

“As someone who has lived in the UK for over 50 years, I still remember the Labour Party as the promoter of the Race Relations Act while the Conservative Party had Enoch Powell making speeches about “Rivers of blood.”

I made a similar point in my piece “Hard-edged but inclusive” written for the book "Are we there yet? A collection on race and Conservatism" published by DEMOS and the Runnymede Trust:

“As Conservatives we can be proud of our party’s early pioneering of racial equality by selecting a Jew, Benjamin Disraeli, as our party leader and then prime minister. At the same time we need to be objective and recognise that our party produced Enoch Powell, who I regard as a racist; while Ted Heath sacked him from the shadow cabinet he was never expelled from the party and instead left voluntarily over the European Economic Community.”

After I wrote these pieces, some of my younger Party friends accused me of being an old fogey, and were incredulous that Enoch Powell could still be relevant to voting patterns today. Accordingly I had a feeling of quiet vindication when I read “Degrees of separation - Ethnic minority voters and the Conservative Party” by Lord Ashcroft. If you search the full report, Enoch Powell gets five mentions. The focus groups organised by Lord Ashcroft and his team show that Enoch Powell’s ghost still haunts us, and is costing us votes. To give just one of the quotes:

“The Tories had a lot of racist policies so it was easy not to vote for them. They appeared to be a racist group. ‘If you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Labour’. And if you go back to the rivers of blood speech, Enoch Powell, there was no-one in the Conservative Party denouncing him and saying this isn’t the way forward. What he said was widely accepted.” [BC] (Black Caribbean)

At a personal level, no matter what else Enoch Powell did for our country, for me he will always be simply the racist who did not want people like me in Britain. Accordingly I was dismayed to read some of the comments to Paul Goodman’s piece “Enoch Powell, the dazzling man who won only 15 votes in a Tory leadership election”.

What is to be done?

We need to learn from the most electorally successful British politician since Margaret Thatcher. When Tony Blair became Labour Party leader, few voters thought that Labour was serious any more about Clause IV of its constitution. However it remained a tangible link with the old Labour of state control and it was a brilliant stroke to force through its repeal.

I suspect relatively few voters today genuinely believe that the Conservative Party really is a party dominated by racists. However Enoch Powell will remain an excuse for ethnic minorities to not vote Conservative until the Party deals properly with his memory. His impending centenary provides the perfect opportunity, and it is our leader David Cameron who needs to perform the exorcism with a high profile speech.

Mr Cameron does not need me to write his speeches for him, but the points I would make, in outline form, are as follows:

• The values of the Conservative Party (the family, self-reliance, hard work and personal social mobility to name but a few) are the values that almost all ethnic minorities recognise as their own. They came to Britain to work hard and succeed, and many have done spectacularly well.
• However many people from ethnic minorities do not vote for their natural party, Conservative, for a very specific reason.
• They remember that many decades ago, the Conservative Party did not welcome non-white members. Most fundamentally they remember Enoch Powell, and his loathsome speech about “Rivers of blood.”
• I (David Cameron) was one year old at the time and don’t remember the speech!
• However it is a stain on the history of our Party that the leader at that time, Edward Heath, did not immediately expel Enoch Powell from our Party.
• Enoch Powell had made some great contributions to Britain during the Second World War, and as a politician afterwards, but all of his accomplishments count as nothing against the racism that he displayed in 1968 and afterwards. He left our Party in 1974, and the reaction of most right thinking Conservatives was “good riddance to bad rubbish.”
• Sadly however much we may regret history, we cannot change or re-write it.
• What I can say, without hesitation, that the Conservative Party today, the Party of Sayeeda Warsi, Kwasi Kwarteng, Priti Patel and others is not the Conservative Party of 1968. It is a party that welcomes members from all parts of our community, and I call upon ethnic minority voters to recognise the Party we are today.

Mohammed Amin: What Shariah really means to Muslims

Mohammed Amin is Vice Chairman of the Conservative Muslim Forum but is writing in a personal capacity.

I was inspired to write this piece in response to Martin Parsons’ “Stopping the spread of sharia should be central to British foreign policy.”

I share many of Martin Parsons’ concerns about the increase in religious extremism amongst some Muslims, such as the activities of Boko Haram in Nigeria which I regard as both criminal and un-Islamic. However I want to explain why adopting an explicit policy against Shariah would be disastrous for British foreign policy.

What is Shariah?

I recommend reading Rashad Ali and Haras Rafiq’s article “Sharia doesn't mean what Islamists claim it means”. Paul Goodman referenced this article in his 31 May 2011 post on the Prevent Review and referred to “sharia, the religious law of Islam.” However treating Shariah as being the same as Islamic law (fiqh in Arabic) actually misses a fundamental point.

My eureka moment was a “dog that didn’t bark in the night” insight when I read Mohammad Hashim Kamali’s “Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence.” While the author is careful to define Arabic terms when he first uses them, he fails to do so with the word "Shariah" and the word is missing from the glossary at the end of the book. This oversight suggests that he thought the word was obvious, because it is so fundamental to Islam, and that caused him to forget to define it.

Mohammed Amin: An Israel for all Israelis

Mohammed Amin is Vice Chairman of the Conservative Muslim Forum but is writing in a personal capacity.

I have always known about Israel’s minorities but it took my visit two years ago to teach me to consistently use correct vocabulary. Identifying someone as an Israeli tells you nothing about their race or religion; when I want to be specific I talk about “Israeli Jews”, “Israeli Arabs”, “Israeli Christians” etc. as the context requires.

Israel's founding principles

As explained in Theodor Herzl’s “The Jewish State”, Israel was to be a sanctuary for Jews facing persecution. The need was vividly demonstrated in 1939 when Cuba, the United States and Britain sent Jewish refugees on the SS St. Louis back to Nazi Germany, where many were eventually murdered. Hence Israel’s Law of Return gives an automatic right to immigrate to anyone in the world who is Jewish (meaning conversion to Judaism or having at least one Jewish grandparent and not having adopted a religion other than Judaism).

However the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel on 14 May 1948 also says:

“The State of Israel will be open for Jewish immigration... will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions;”

Mohammed Amin: The state needs to exit the marriage business

Mohammed Amin is Vice Chairman of the Conservative Muslim Forum but is writing in a personal capacity.

Marriage or its absence has suddenly become very topical:

• According to National Statistics data reported in the Guardian in 2009 46% of babies in England & Wales were born to unmarried parents.
• The Guardian also reports that rate of marriage is the lowest it has ever been. Last Friday's "Women's Hour" discussed the problems of cohabitation breakdown with partners not having the legal rights that spouses have.
• Paul Goodman has written about the problem of religious young people, especially in the Muslim community, who are not bothering with a civil wedding.
• Meanwhile, many gay people in civil partnerships consider that the state is offering them a “second class” relationship compared with marriage. Lynne Featherstone MP has announced that next year the Government will consult on whether same sex partners should be allowed to enter into civil marriages like heterosexuals. This could ignore the same type of “culture war” that plagues the USA and was discussed in Radio 4's "Sunday" programme.