Muslim SNP councillor worries Boris Johnson government will make racism worse

Junaid Ashraf is amongst the three figures featured in Young, Asian And Scots, which screens at 10pm on Tuesday night and explores Asian Scottish identity.

Ashraf, an SNP councillor for Cumbernauld South, believes its vital viewing and tackles topics which have become more urgent since the Thursday night reelection of Boris Johnson.

The 23-year-old was part of the successful reelection campaign for Stuart McDonald in Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East.

But Johnson’s victory has soured that win and left him feeling “ashamed” about UK politics.

That’s because of Johnson’s conduct towards Muslims, as well as other marginalised groups. Johnson used the terms “bank robber” and “letterbox” to refer to Muslim women who wear the niqab face covering.

Last month he backtracked on a pledge to hold an inquiry into Islamophobia within the Conservative party – something the Muslim Council of Scotland has said is a “deep problem”.

Sayeeda Warsi, former Conservative Party co-chair, has been a vocal critic of its record on the issue, last month saying it should have been “proactively anti-racist rather than being consistently shamed into action” as The National revealed how one Scots Tory candidate was axed over online comments about Muslims, gay people and the Holocaust.

But none of that derailed Johnson’s route to Number 10.

Ashraf compares the result and the culture surrounding it to a racist incident he experienced at the age of 14 while travelling home on a bus with his cousins. “A guy got on and for 40 minutes he was yelling and screaming at us,” Ashraf says. “He screamed in my face, and spat on me, it was on my face and on my shirt, then he pulled the emergency cord and ran off the bus.

“The bus had eight or nine people on board, plus the driver. People got on and off, but no-one said anything. Why did noone say anything? One guy was getting angry and almost got up, but an older lady pushed him down, so he didn’t.

“It’s that silence. Boris Johnson has been saying these things about Muslim women and African people and he ends up with a bigger majority. Do his comments not mean anything?”

The documentary also features Sinita Potiwol, of Edinburgh social enterprise Punjabi Junction, and third sector worker Sannah Ahmed from Glasgow, and sees Ashraf interview Labour politician Anas Sarwar, one of Scotland’s two Asian MSPs.

Brexit, Ashraf says was “based on immigration” and it’s increasing his fears for the future. “When you’re growing up, you always feel you’ll be living in a more understanding world,” he said. “Anas thinks his children will grow up in a more hateful place. Over the last 10 years or so, that’s the trajectory I’ve seen.”

In 1997 Sarwar’s father Mohammad became Scotland’s first Asian MP. At Thursday’s election, all successful candidates were white. Ashraf says that shows how far we still have to go to address diversity across political and public life.

Ashraf, who was elected at the age of 20, says he may consider running for the Scottish Parliament in future and wants to see main stage time dedicated to issues affecting minority communities at party conferences as part of a cultural change to make politics more representative.

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But, he says, there’s always “a lot of pushback” to initiatives aimed at increasing black and ethnic minority participation.

“When you are trying to move to better representation on councils or boards or in parliament, what’s hindered us is Scottish society has said ‘look at us, we’re a bit better than England’, therefore we’re not doing anything to try harder,” he says.

“When I raised concerns about representation for ethnic minority groups in my council, a woman suggested that maybe minority groups have become so integrated that we don’t need that representation. I asked her if that meant women didn’t need representation, and she said that was different,” he goes on.

“It’s not different. If we don’t have ethnic minority representation, we’re not dealing with issues that affect ethnic minorities, like Islamophobia.

“People from our council have asked me, ‘do you know Ahmed? He’s got a beard’. Who? You’re just describing an Asian man, why should I know him?

“A lot of people have assumed I was elected in a majority ethnic minority area. I live in Cumbernauld.”