Muslims who uphold Islamic sexual morality are deserting the U.K.’s newest political party, as an ideological civil war tears apart the unstable Islamo-Leftist coalition, an alliance backed by Islamist outfits.
The Muslim parliamentarian Zarah Sultana, who co-founded Your Party together with far-left politician Jeremy Corbyn in September, boycotted the first day of her party’s inaugural conference in Liverpool on November 29-30, hurling accusations of a “witch hunt.”
Sultana’s boycott brings to the fore a fierce battle over the party’s militant pro-LBGTQ+ stance, which has alienated orthodox Muslims. Two parliamentarians, Adnan Hussain and Iqbal Mohamed, have quit the coalition.
The usual infighting between the hard left and now, the socially conservative religious crowd in ‘Your Party’ sounds like the Life of Brian in turbo charge.
Muslim Parliamentarians Challenge Leftist Orthodoxy
In September, Hussain, one of the six lawmakers behind efforts to found the new party, angered leftists in Your Party by claiming that trans women are “not biologically women.” Sultana hit back by insisting that “bigotry has no place” in the party.
Hussain released a statement on November 14, detailing his concern over the “persistent infighting, factional competition, and a struggle for power, position, and influence” within the party, which led to an environment that felt “toxic, exclusionary, and deeply disheartening.”
Explaining why he quit the party, the independent MP for the predominantly Muslim constituency of Blackburn said that he had been “deeply troubled” by the rhetoric used, particularly against Muslim men by “certain figures within the steering process.”
On November 15, Iqbal Mohamed, an MP who helped found the coalition, declared on X, “White or brown men shouldn’t be telling/forcing biological women to give up their rights and private spaces to other biological men—black, white, brown or trans.”
The Paradox of Inclusivity
“What about the biological women’s rights?” Mohamed asked in a spat on social media. “They have rights which I will always fight to protect. I also believe in the human rights of all trans and LGBTQ+ people, but not by taking away the hard-won rights of women.”
Sultana rebuked Mohamed for his gender-critical posts, accusing him of “bigotry.” A week later, the MP for the Muslim stronghold of Dewsbury and Batley announced that he was leaving Your Party, referring to “false allegations and smears made against me.”
Financial Questions
On November 30, Mohamed revealed that Sultana had not yet fully accounted for around £1.25 million in donations and membership fees and had only transferred £400k to the official Your Party account to date.
In an article published on the PoliticsHome portal, Mohamed confirmed that he left Your Party, “because of something more fundamental: an increasingly rigid ideological culture that insists socially conservative values have no place in a left-wing movement.”
“There is a strain of thought on the left that sees socially conservative views as a pathology to be corrected,” he wrote. “When the left insists that working-class people must relinquish their cultural or religious attachments to be politically acceptable, it reproduces a form of liberal paternalism every bit as condescending as the attitudes it claims to oppose.”
Rigid Ideology Alienates Muslim Supporters
At the party’s founding conference, Robert Carter, a convert to Islam and a journalist for the Islamist news website 5Pillars, heckled Sultana over the transgender row. The Muslim politician who gave a speech on Sunday after boycotting the first day of the conference responded by attacking critics who accused her of not being “a practicing Muslim.”
“That is absolutely disgraceful behaviour and it is my faith that allows me to call injustice out every single time I’m in Parliament, every time I’m on TV, in my day-to-day life,” she said, explaining her support for trans rights.
“What about the socially conservative purge?” Carter shouted in response. “Muslims say you are tearing them away from the party, [socially] conservative people like Adnan Hussain!” Sultana responded by accusing Carter of “misogyny” for interrupting her speech.
“When Your Party was announced a few months ago, many Muslims saw in it a possible political home,” Carter wrote on 5Pillars. “The internal hostility towards socially conservative Muslims—subtle in some places, blatant in others—has driven many away.”
Political Tribalism Pilloried on Social Media
Your Party is being pilloried on social media for its lack of unifying policies and the conflict it faces in trying to hold together a conservative religious morality with a socialist ideology.
“A bunch of sexually confused young people and socially conservative Muslims glued together by the duct tape that is the issue of Palestine isn’t exactly the strongest policy platform,” one critic wrote on X.
“The problem with Islam and the Woke Left is that they ideologically clash in such a way that it becomes an unmentionable leviathan in any room,” another quipped. “It’s a wedding made in hell with two suitors who are continually mixing hemlock for the other to drink whilst hiding from those observing.”
Fiyaz Mughal, OBE, founder of the Muslim hate crime monitor, Tell MAMA, told Speaking to Focus on Western Islamism (FWI):
The usual infighting between the hard left and now, the socially conservative religious crowd in ‘Your Party’ sounds like the Life of Brian in turbo charge. The Judean People’s Party hates the People’s Party of Judea and encompassing diversity becomes encompassing diversity for some, for the other group. It is a shambles and this is where it is heading.
In an interview with the Middle East Eye, a day before the party’s conference, Sultana softened her stance, blaming the “ruling class” for dividing “Muslims against trans people.”
“Our communities—Muslim communities, black, Asian, ethnic minority communities, working-class communities, disabled people, refugees, migrants, the LGBT community are all being attacked from the three major parties in this country [and] the right-wing press,” she reiterated in her conference address. “That is not to say that there will not be people who hold views different to myself in this party,” she added, calling for unity.
The late-November rupture is especially awkward for Sultana, who has been part of an effort to establish an alliance between Islamists and leftists since 2018 when she served as a parliamentary officer for Muslim Engagement and Development (MEND), which cheered her decision to leave Labour and found a new party with Jeremy Corbyn, calling it “a bold new chapter.”
The Telegraph noted in July, the creation of Your Party “appears to herald a new dawn” in the long-running partnership between the far left and Islamist movements—a partnership that surged amid the Gaza war. “The Left hopes to harness the fervour of anti-Western sentiment among radicalised Muslims, while Islamism benefits from the warm glow of the more acceptable face of progressives who exert influence over culture and politics,” it added.
In the end, Your Party didn’t herald a new dawn—it merely proved that even the most devoted revolutionaries can’t hold together a coalition built on mutually exclusive absolutes.
