Just one week after a major furore over antisemitism in the UK Labour Party, the media is trying to create a storm over Islamic Relief’s upcoming advertising campaign for it’s Ramadan appeal.
The advertisement would be carried across the UK on buses, with the word ‘SubhanAllah’ on the poster, which translates to ‘Glory be to God’. Islamic Relief is the UK’s largest Muslim charity and operates across the world providing aid and fighting poverty, since 1984.
It is being reported in contrast to an Christian ad campaign which was banned from being played in cinemas. Despite the fact that the two stories are in no way similar; as there are two entirely different bodies which administer such decisions.
The banned Christian ad campaign was to depict The Lord’s Prayer – something which very few Muslims would have any objection to. Christian groups in the UK have previously used Bus advertisements for religious purposes, as have the Jewish, Hindu and Sikh communities.
However, mainstream media outlets like the Daily Mail and other sensationalists on radio, are trying to stir an unnecessary tension against Muslims through comparing the stories. By framing the stories in spite of each other, directly creates a backlash against Muslims from right-wing bigots who are already paranoid British Muslims want to ‘take over’.
Ironically, this comes just a week after a large row about anti semitism and a smear campaign about recently elected Mayor of London – Sadiq Khan; an openly non-practicing Muslim, for allegedly being ‘linked’ to extremists. This fear campaign was evidently rejected by Londoners, who voted Khan to be their mayor at the polling stations.
Imran Madden, the UK director of Islamic Relief, said: “In a sense this could be called a climate change campaign because we want to change the negative climate around international aid and around the Muslim community in this country.”
A recent poll shows that British Muslims give the most to charity, ahead of Christians, Jews and atheists. Something the mainstream media will conveniently leave out when reporting this story, so make sure you share it!
[easy-tweet tweet=”#SubhanAllah, Muslims in Britain lead the way in giving charity! ” usehashtags=”no”]
