Friday Post 12

By Shofi Ahmed

We have been exploring a sheikh’s story who was ready to step into the fire with the holy Qur’an to prove to an European that it doesn’t burn. It happened in India as we have read. India has recently come into the spotlight in the UK like never before. This week saw an extraordinary history in the making as the first British Asian became a British prime minister. His family originated from the Indian Subcontinent. Britain now has its first non-white, non-christian Hindu prime minister in Rishi Sunak.

I kept an ear into the christian circles. To hear echoes and hisses whether it’s a matter of concern or fear for the Christan majorities. A christian scholar John Stevens who is national director for the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches upheld what history has shown us. That there have been good Prime Ministers who have had no real Christian faith. Winston Churchill was not a Christian in any meaningful sense of the term, and Clement Attlee was at best an agnostic. He is of the view that a PM from a minority community might be more sympathetic to our concerns.

John Stevens reckons hat the country is looking for a quasi-Messianic saviour who will rescue people from the difficulties that we are facing. Christians majorities know that Rishi Sunak will not be such a saviour, but nor would any PM, even if they were a committed evangelical believer. So he advises his fellow christians that they should neither fear the appointment of a Hindu PM nor should expect too much from him. Instead, they should pray, as the Bible commands, that he would be given great wisdom to lead us in such challenging circumstances.

I buy that and totally agreed with his proposition that the prime moral danger to the UK comes not from the appointment of a Hindu PM, but from the triumph of intolerant liberal progressivism that views all religious faith as anachronistic and harmful, and wishes to legislate, for example, to ban practices that seek to help believers struggle to resist the same-sex attraction. This agenda has not been restrained by the nominal Christians who have been in office as PM since the 1960s.

We can see a Christian view of Rishi Sunak sitting at the helm at Number 10 Downing Street. What about us, Muslim views, what if Rishi Sunak tends to take a page from Modi? That’s notorious tactics against Muslim minorities in India have hurt Muslims across the world. Then it won’t be an act of only one mighty politician of our newly minted government.

Because the British Constitution contains multiple checks and balances that prevent any single individual from exercising absolute power. We are a Parliamentary democracy and the PM is neither an absolute monarch nor the equivalent of an executive President. He or she cannot dictate policy but is dependent on securing a majority in Parliament for their legislative programme.

The challenges we face as a nation now require technical-economic solutions, and determining appropriate policy. People with a strong moral compass to care for all, poor and vulnerable can deliver that. It does a matter what faith or minority group he or she belongs to. The ball is in Rishi Sunak’s court now.

We are still on the track. In Shaa Allah we will draw closer to explore our story.