MANY who voted for Brexit believed that if the UK split from the EU the influx of immigrants, Muslims in particular, would be severely curtailed. In 2018, almost a third of Brexit voters swallowed right-wing propaganda that Muslim immigration was part of a plot to Islamicise Britain.

But now that Brexit is done and dusted (well, sort of) there is jubilation among Muslims who supported leaving the EU.

Aftab Chughtai, who serves as the Chairman of Muslims for Britain is quoted in this GeoTV report as saying that the “EU imposed unnecessary restrictions on the UK especially when it came to immigration.”

Speaking at a “lavish reception” in London to celebrate Brexit, Chughtai said believed that the Pakistani diaspora was facing difficulties in inviting their family members to the UK because of the pressure from the EU but after Brexit, the situation would change.

Chughtai added that Brexit is about free economic trade and ownership and this concept is linked with Islamic economic philosophy of free trade and commerce. He said Islam supported the values of free market, and Brexit was about the future of this great country which is linked with the future of tens of millions of people including millions of Muslims.

In 2017 he said:

If you explore fundamental conservative values such as family, low taxes, free market economies, many of these are concepts which were promoted when Islam first came about. In fact the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) himself was a prominent businessman as was his wife. We look forward to finding common thinking conservative parties across the world and welcoming them to the Global Conservative Family.

This is the same Chughtai who, in 2017, was named and shamed in a government list of employers who failed to pay its workers the minimum wage.

The GeoTV report said that almost 800,000 Muslims voted to leave the EU, but immediately after the referendum Muslim View reported that 70 pecent of Muslims voted to remain. Yahya Birt, who was undertaking a doctorate in religious studies at the University of Leeds, wrote:

The reason why Muslims voted overwhelmingly for Remain is obvious. The Leave campaign won not only by pledging to reduce migration and take back full border controls from the EU but it did so in a way that played into race politics. Examples from the campaign include the argument over Turkey joining the EU, the infamous UKIP ‘breaking point’ poster showing Syrian refugees on the Croatia-Slovenia border and the claim that Muslim paedophiles would flood into Britain – and so it continued for months on end. Every far-right group in Britain and the rest of Europe has welcomed the Brexit result and social media is now awash with accounts of emboldened bigots telling Poles, Muslim school kids or mosque-goers to get out of Britain … The Brexit victory has empowered the bigots in our society, not placated them. And to their credit, most British Muslims in straitened circumstances did not buy into the canard sold to their fellow have-nots that leaving the EU would solve all their problems.

Hat tip: BarrieJohn