Representation is sold to our communities as the holy grail of acceptance. If a Muslim becomes a Member of Parliament, he has not only achieved the highest status of representation, but also then becomes an exemplar for representation. If you look then, to those Muslim MPs who were part of Tony Blair’s Labour Party, they were pro or abstained on issues to do with war, securitisation and neo-liberalism – and so when I want to consider what the panacea to structural racism and the system’s inherent bias against us might look like, I remain unconvinced that it takes place through people that
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Often times when Muslims (and many other minorities) are represented in the media, they are portrayed in a negative light to fuel the racists, misogynists, homophobes, bigots, etc. However these negative portrayals are the voices of the few, not the many. The media shows you what they want you to believe, not what is factual and the majority.