British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has called for an investigation after a female MP from his Conservative party claimed she was sacked from government in a 2020 reshuffle because of her Muslim faith.
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Nusrat Ghani, 49, told the Sunday Times that a party official explained to him in February 2020 that “his origins and his faith” had been decisive in his ouster, reviving suspicions of Islamophobia within the majority.
“The Prime Minister has asked the Cabinet Office,” a government body, “to carry out an inquiry into the accusations made by MP Nusrat Ghani,” a Downing Street spokesman said in a statement on Monday.
The accusations come at an already difficult time for Boris Johnson’s political formation, which finds itself in an ejection seat after the Downing Street holiday scandal in full confinement.
The Prime Minister called for “the facts about what happened to be established”, the spokesman continued, saying that “as he said at the time, the Prime Minister takes these accusations very seriously.
“I was told that at the Downing Street reshuffle meeting my ‘Muslim faith’ had been raised as ‘an issue’, that a Muslim woman in government was making my colleagues uncomfortable and that it was feared that ‘I was not loyal to the party because I was not doing enough to defend it against allegations of Islamophobia,’” the MP told The Sunday Times.
“It was like a punch in the stomach. I felt humiliated and helpless,” she said, explaining that she did not speak about it publicly at the time because she had been warned that she would be “ostracized by her colleagues” and that her “career and reputation would be destroyed”.
When these accusations had been made for the first time, Boris Johnson had recommended that he formally file a complaint with the authorities of the party, which the deputy had not done, recalls Downing Street.
A party official, Mark Spencer, identified himself as the official targeted by these accusations, while denying them.
They rekindle old demons among conservatives, long accused of letting Islamophobia flourish in their ranks. In 2021, a report had concluded that “anti-Muslim sentiment remained a problem within the party”, faced with a problem of Islamophobia at the local or individual levels but not “institutional”.
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