How should British Muslims vote in the referendum that is being organised on the country's membership of the European Union? It shocks and worries me that I am having to ask this question at all. I believe that British politics have benefited profoundly from the absence of the faith-based pattern of voting that has long applied in some other countries. Unfortunately, British Muslims have no choice but to ask themselves this question, however. They need to ask whether it is safe for them to remain part of an EU that is being steadily captured by anti-Muslim bigotry and hatred. The latest example of this dangerous trend concerns the dreadful remarks made two weeks ago by the Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico. “Islam,” declared Fico, “has no place in Slovakia.” He made it clear that he was not calling for a secular Slovakia. He wants to keep Muslims out as part of what looks and sounds very much like a crusade for a Christian Slovakia and, by extension, a Christian Europe. Fico was not talking out of turn. He was repeating comments he made during his election campaign earlier this year. Fico thinks that “multiculturalism is a fiction,” says that he is “monitoring every Muslim in our territory,” and refuses to take Muslim refugees in Slovakia under the EU quota system. This is not just deeply troubling in itself. It is of much more than local significance. This is because Fico is set to take over the rotating presidency of the European Union in three weeks' time. Throughout the second half of 2016 he will be able to direct the trajectory of the European Union, make decisions about legislation, and set the tone for the EU as a whole. Let's put it another way. From 1 July, the man in charge of the European Union will be an Islamophobic bigot set on keeping Muslims out of his country. One would have expected this to cause deep anger and revulsion inside the EU. Yet this is not the case. Astonishingly, Fico's remark that “Islam has no place in Slovakia” has been met by silence. There has been no word of complaint from German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President François Hollande, or, so far as I can discover, from any other European leader. British Prime Minister David Cameron has said nothing. I am fairly confident that he does not have private sympathies with Fico's views. However, let's not forget that when Cameron notoriously accused British Muslims of being sympathetic to the Islamic State (IS) militant group, he did so at a “security summit” in Bratislava, standing alongside Fico. This collective silence from the EU leadership is deafening. One need only imagine the denunciations that would be pouring onto Fico's head had he asserted that Jews, homosexuals, gypsies or any other minority group had no place in his country. This collective failure to condemn Fico makes other European leaders morally complicit in his anti-Muslim rant. Fico's remarks are just a symptom of a far larger pan-European problem. The outlook for Muslims across large parts of the continent is grim. Czech President Miloš Zeman has claimed that it is “practically impossible” to integrate Muslims into the Western world. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán opposes refugees on the grounds that he wants to keep Europe Christian. In Austria the hard-right anti-Muslim Austrian Freedom Party came within an ace of taking power earlier this year. Bear in mind that there are more far-right MEPs in the European Parliament (once you add together Golden Dawn, Geert Wilders' Dutch Freedom Party, France's Front National and the Swedish Democrats) than there are British Conservatives and Labour MEPs put together. Bear in mind that Marine Le Pen — who notoriously compared Muslims praying in the streets of Paris to the wartime Nazi occupation of France — is on course to perform very strongly in next year's French presidential elections. Remember that Alternative for Germany (AfD) — a group that the British Conservatives were until recently in coalition with in the European Parliament — has adopted an anti-Islamic manifesto in next year's German elections. For the last thousand years or longer, anti-Semitism has been the original sin of Europe, with pogroms, discrimination and ghettoisation culminating in the horror of the Holocaust. Today, anti-Semitism remains a live and very nasty problem (just think of the history of the French Front National or the hideous backstory of the Austrian Freedom Party) and we must be constantly on the alert. But anti-Muslim bigotry has also emerged with real virulence. It has become so common that it is actually taken for granted, as the failure to challenge Fico's remarks shows. Let's return to the question I posed at the start of this article. It needs to be acknowledged at once that there are troubling elements in the Vote Leave camp in the UK. British Justice Minister Michael Gove, one of the outstanding figures in the Leave campaign, is Britain's most senior Muslim basher. Gove has never made any remark remotely as hateful as Fico's recent contribution. Nevertheless, he is one of a small group of intellectuals around Cameron who have made the case for the UK's anti-extremism strategy. Transmuted into the Prevent programme, this has caused traumatic damage to community relations. Meanwhile UK politician Nigel Farage's United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) has far too often been guilty of stirring up hatred against Muslims. Gove and Farage haven't condemned Fico's revolting comments any more than Cameron or Merkel. Muslims have every reason to feel very nervous of both of them. Yet in Britain people are protected by the rule of law. At heart this is still a decent, tolerant country, the reason why never in history has an MP representing a fascist party been elected in Britain. There is an ancient tradition in Britain called parliamentary sovereignty, which means the British people can elect their own leaders. They then hold them to account. When they are sick and tired of them, they can kick them out. The trouble is that decent British people can't say no to Fico. They didn't vote for him. They can't vote him out. Like it or not, the anti-democratic European system means that this bigot is the EU president for the next six months. Something dark is at work across the continent. Bear in mind that the euro operates as a gigantic job-destruction machine, wiping out industries and even whole national economies. In these desperate circumstances of economic destitution bigotry thrives and politicians like Fico, Wilders, Orbán and others flourish. I suspect thaisis why so many senior British Muslim politicians are backing Brexit, or a vote to leave the EU. Syed Kamall, leader of the European Conservatives and the most senior elected British politician in Brussels, wants to pull us out of the EU. So does Nusrat Ghani, the first female Tory Muslim MP. As I said at the start of this article, religion should have nothing at all to do with political choices in a modern democracy. Unfortunately, Muslims cannot afford in the current environment to take only secular considerations into account. They know that parts of Europe are taking a very ugly direction. UK Muslims have a great deal to ponder as they prepare to vote on British membership of the EU on 23 June. The writer was British Press Awards Columnist of the Year in 2013.
