A large number of Muslim women candidates have a good chance of being one of the first British Muslim women MPs. Among them are:

1. Salma Yaqoob: parliament candidate for the new Hall Green constituency.

2. Shabana Mahmood: fighting Clare Short’s old seat in Birmingham Ladywood.

3. Nusrat Ghani: the Conservative parliamentary candidate for Birmingham Ladywood

4. Yasmin Qureshi: who inherits a big Labour majority in Bolton South.

5. Rushanara Ali: who could well take the Bethnal Green seat back for Labour.

6. Maryam Khan: the Labour candidate for Bury North.

All in all, up to a quarter of the 16 Muslim females standing as candidates at the next month’s general elections are in prominent positions to win parliamentary seats for the first time, according to an analysis carried out exclusively by The Muslim News.

The total number of Muslim MPs could also continue to double, including at least one of two Conservatives being elected for the first time. The first Muslim MP was elected in 1997, the second in 2001 and the number doubled again at the last election to four, all have so far been Labour.

Salma Yaqoob is regarded as the most prominent Muslim woman in British public life. She wears a headscarf, a powerful symbol of a faith she has accommodated with her passionate leftwing politics. She is standing as a candidate for the tiny and fractured Respect party.

In some streets around the new constituency of Hall Green, her poster is on every window. Since her narrow defeat for Westminster in 2005, she has built up support through her work as a local councillor, as well as building a national profile through her appearances on BBC’s Question Time.

She might just topple Labour from a seat in an area which, in 1997, it counted as one of its safest. Boundary changes have brought much of the old Sparkbrook and Small Heath constituency (Labour majority: 19,526) into the new Hall Green.

Her result is looking close.

What will help Yaqoob is that her Labour opponent, Roger Godsiff, who has held the seat since 1992, has been badly damaged by the expenses scandal. His second-home claims were among the highest in England, and despite charging £163,885 to the taxpayer in 2007-08, last year he spoke in only five debates and voted in 56% of divisions.

Yaqoob was wooed by Labour after 2005. She acknowledges that “My values are traditional Labour, but New Labour has gone to the right”. She was even courted by the Liberal Democrats and the Tories, a tribute to her rare capacity for fair-minded plain speaking, most evident in her Question Time appearance earlier this year, at Wootton Bassett, when she earned respect for her handling of questions about British soldiers killed in Afghanistan, a war she opposes.

But she has stuck with Respect, despite its internal disputes, since 2005, and is probably now better known than her party. She is accused by prominent Labour and Liberal Democrat Muslims of “leading the community into a “cul-de-sac” but defends her politics vigorously.

“I couldn’t speak like I do if I was in Labour. I’m not here as a career politician, but because I want to offer an alternative to the neo-liberal model, which is patently failing. I now punch above my weight, working with other parties and influencing them. I want to try and open the space for discussion and debate, which is crucial right now, and nudge Labour into a more principled position.”

She says she won’t “make a tactic into a principle”, clearly indicating that she would come back to Labour on the right terms. In the meantime, her gamble to be her own woman and to speak her mind without having to submit to party discipline is surviving against all the odds. A recent independent assessment argued that she is among Birmingham’s three most influential councillors.

Ironically, her toughest battles are probably within the Muslim community. Contrary to assumptions that this is where the core of her support lies, she has had to pick her way very carefully through the sensitivities of conservatives within her community. The old Sparkbrook and Small Heath had the highest number of Muslim votes of any constituency in the country, and many of them are now in Yaqoob’s patch.

“I’ve had death threats and criticism that I support gays – because I have a clear anti-discrimination position – and there have been claims that it is haram [forbidden in Islam] to vote for women. People say to me, ‘Have you no shame?’ and they accuse me of immodesty and ask my husband why he lets me speak in public. It’s still an uphill struggle.”

But she has been winning even her fiercest critics round. “Some people who made out fatwas against voting for a woman have now been saying that I’m the right candidate. I have been invited into mosques – some of which don’t even have facilities for women to pray – to give the Friday sermons.”

Yaqoob is well aware that she is a challenge to traditional Muslim political culture – not just because she is a woman, but because she is not afraid to speak her mind. She has openly criticised the way the postal vote has been misused in Birmingham to strengthen the traditional biraderi – clan affiliations. In practice, what this means is that a community fixer will offer a party hundreds of votes in return for favours.

She recognises that many non-Muslim voters can feel threatened by her as a Muslim. “I’m between a rock and a hard place,” she says. “I have to jump hurdles because of the way I look. Firstly, I have to make it clear that I don’t support terrorism, secondly, that I’m British, thirdly, that I don’t just lobby for Muslims and lastly, that I’m not a Trojan horse for sinister Islamist plots.

“People still question me about the hijab as a symbol of oppression. I try to stay patient and build a relationship of trust. For a real discussion, people have to be able to hear each other: someone has to pull the barriers down. People have a genuine fear, and you need to deal with it or you are dehumanising them – it won’t just go away.”

The key factor benefiting Yaqoob is the decline of the close bond between Muslims and Labour, which has defined the politics of the Muslim community for two generations. Disillusion with foreign policy, most notably in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as on domestic economic issues, is likely to slash the Muslim votes in Birmingham.

In Ladywood, the Conservatives hope to take the seat from labour. The Conservative candidate, Nusrat Ghani, is a Muslim woman, as well as her Labour rival Shabana Mahmood. They both grew up in this area of Birmingham. Both can call on the family connections vital to winning votes. Mahmood’s father is the chair of the Birmingham Labour party.

Both are able to get beyond the “front room campaigning” of previous elections; candidates and canvassers sit in family sitting rooms and are served delicious tea spiced with green cardamom, while the conversations run on in Urdu or Mirpuri. The questions here are about family and which village the candidate is “from” back in Pakistan. There is no mistaking the pride and delight among these women to see a female candidate.

“My generation had a much more traditional life and you listened to your husband on who to vote for, but my daughters have a completely different outlook,” says Maqsood Bibi through a translator. “It’s a good thing for women to come forward so that it is not just men in politics. As a Muslim, I believe God gives you, as a woman, the same rights as he gives to the men. So why shouldn’t you become an MP?”

Along the street, Gulshan Begum was even more forthright. “My generation of women are often illiterate and we need women in power to support us.”

Sources:

Madeleine Bunting, “Respect candidate spearheads quiet revolution to get Muslim women involved in politics” Guardian UK April 23, 2010

Hamed Chapman and Elham A Buaras, “UK: First Muslim women MPs to be elected” The Muslim news April 15, 2010