Parvez Akhar, who is running in Luton South, has called on the prime minister to launch an inquiry into Islamophobia (Picture: Getty)

A Conservative Party parliamentary candidate has called on Boris Johnson to apologise for his comments comparing Muslim women to ‘letterboxes’ and for his blind spot towards Islamophobia.

Parvez Akhtar, who is hoping to be the Tory MP for Luton South, said he felt compelled to speak out against his own party leader, after hearing the chief Rabbi urging people to ‘vote with their conscience’.

He told Metro.co.uk: ‘The chief Rabbi’s comments stirred something within me to look into my own conscience’.

Mr Akhtar said if he failed to speak out, he would be ‘complicit in the rise and normalisation of Islamophobia’.




In his earlier statement on Twitter today, Mr Akhtar said he had been a member of the party since 2005, and had ‘known about anti-Muslim hatred’, including two incidents he had personally experienced in 2009 and 2017.

Shockingly, he revealed that in the last election, he was dropped off the list of candidates in consideration for the seat of Coventry North-West, because someone had smeared him with being linked to terrorism.

He said: ‘A senior party official, had told me that was the reason I had been dropped, and that they didn’t have enough time to investigate, so the safest option was not to select me.’

Parvez Akhtar says he has been a member of the party since 2005

Mr Akhtar also condemned anti-Semitism in the Labour party, and said this was not a ‘competition in who is least racist’ but that both Islamophobia and anti-Semitism needed tackling.

Mr Akhtar says that since his selection, he has seen the hurt and pain caused to the Muslim community, by Boris Johnson’s comments.

He called on the party to hold an independent inquiry into Islamophobia.

Earlier today, Mr Johnson told ITV that he is sorry for the hurt and offence caused by Islamophobia, though did not reference his own comments referring to Muslim women who wear the burka as ‘letterboxes and bank robbers’.

He said: ‘Whenever we have an incident of anti-Semitism or Islamophobia in the Conservative Party, we take a zero tolerance approach’.

He added: ‘We have a one bounce and we deal with it approach to this.

‘We are going to have an independent inquiry into Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, every manner of prejudice and discrimination, and it will start before Christmas.’

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