The wife of the Conservative Environment Secretary, Michael Gove, has sparked outrage after claiming that abusing Muslims is ‘clever and funny‘.
Sarah Vine, who also writes as a columnist for the Daily Mail, made the controversial outburst in response to left-wing journalist Owen Jones on Twitter.
Jones initially tweeted a picture of the recent widely-criticised Spectator article that argued “there is not nearly enough Islamophobia within the Tory Party“, adding:
“If a magazine published an article saying “there is not nearly enough anti-Semitism within the Labour Party”, it would rightly be a national scandal and both the writer and editor would be fired.
Why is this different? Because Islamophobia is rampant and normalised on the right.”
https://twitter.com/OwenJones84/status/1028245795827580928
However, in answer to Jones’ question asking why anti-Muslim hatred is somehow different to anti-Jewish hatred, Vine fired back arguing that abusing Muslims is apparently “clever and funny“:
Because it’s clever and funny. Unlike Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party. https://t.co/CqdvEsnxRk
— Sarah Vine (@WestminsterWAG) August 12, 2018
Unsurprisingly, Vine’s blatant disregard for the safety of British Muslims became the subject of severe criticism:
https://twitter.com/ukstevearnold/status/1028676519399440384
Nothing funny about it, Sarah. What's wrong with you?
— Akshay Vara (@ThatGuyAkshay) August 12, 2018
Furthermore, following Boris Johnson’s widely-criticised comments in a recent Telegraph article that compared Muslim women wearing full-face veils to letterboxes and bank robbers, instances of Islamophobic attacks on Muslim women wearing Burqas spiked, according to the anti-racism charity Tell Mama:
'Letterbox' insults against Muslim women spike in wake of Johnson comments https://t.co/StR6kIGPIV
— Tell MAMA UK (@TellMamaUK) August 13, 2018
Vine’s husband Michael Gove also came in for severe criticism from the former Minister, Baroness Warsi, who claimed that the current Tory Environment Secretary hides “extreme views about Muslims’.
Ms Warsi’s explosive revelation about Vine’s husband came just days after revealing that the Conservative Party had an Islamophobia epidemic with members having to be routinely expelled for anti-Muslim hatred.
Following Warsi’s comments, Britain’s biggest Muslim organisation, the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), made demands to the Conservative Party to instigate a formal investigation into Islamophobia within the Party – a demand which the party have decided to completely ignore.
