MP applauded for challenging PM over burka 'bank robbers' comment
Boris Johnson said women wearing burkas and hijabs looked like bank robbers and letterboxes in a newspaper article last year.
Wednesday 4 September 2019 17:19, UK
A Labour MP has received a round of applause after calling for Boris Johnson to apologise for calling Muslim women "bank robbers and letterboxes".
Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi also used Mr Johnson's first Prime Minister's Questions session to call for an inquiry into Islamophobia in the Conservative Party.
The Labour MP for Slough, who is Sikh, said: "If I decide to wear a turban, or you decide to wear a cross, or he decides to wear a kippah or a skull cap, or she decides to wear a hijab or a burka, does that mean it's open season for right honourable members of this house to make derogatory and divisive remarks about our parents?"
In August 2018, Mr Johnson wrote a Telegraph column referring to Muslim women "looking like letterboxes" and a "bank robber".
Mr Dhesi said: "For those of us from a young age who have had to endure and stand up to names such as towel-head or Taliban, or coming from bongo bongo land, we can appreciate full well the hurt and pain felt by already vulnerable Muslim women when they are described as looking like bank robbers and letterboxes.
"So, rather than hide behind sham and whitewash investigations, when will the prime minister finally apologise for his derogatory and racist remarks which have led to a spike in hate crime."
The entire Labour bench erupted into applause - unusual during PMQs - and there were calls of "come on, son" from Mr Dhesi's colleagues.
He then asked when the prime minister would organise an inquiry into Islamphobia in his party.
"Something which he and his chancellor promised on national television," Mr Dheshi added.
Following Mr Johnson's article last year, monitoring group Tell Mama found anti-Muslim incidents increased more than quadrupled - from eight incidents the week before to 38 the following.
Twenty-two of them were directed at women wearing the niqab, or face veil.
The prime minister responded by saying his article was a "strong liberal defence... of everybody's right to wear whatever they want in this country".
He said he was proud to have Muslim and Sikh ancestors and proud that his cabinet is the most diverse "in the history of this country".
Mr Johnson then turned the tables on the Labour Party, saying there has not been "any hint of an apology for the anti-Semitism that is now rampant in their ranks".
Speaking to Sky News after PMQs, Mr Dhesi called the prime minister's response "pathetic" and said he should have apologised.
He added: "Instead, he decided to say, 'Oh, I've got Muslim friends, I've got Muslim heritage, I've got Sikh heritage'.
"Well, look, I might have Polish heritage, I might have Scottish relatives, but it doesn't mean I'm then immune to say whatever I want without any consequences."
The prime minister also raised eyebrows in his first PMQs for swearing when he described Labour's economic plans as "s*** or bust" - quoting Labour MP Angela Rayner.
Most of the 21 Tory MPs expelled from the party less than 24 hours before for rebelling against the government to halt a no-deal Brexit were sitting in the Tory benches alongside their former colleagues.