She is the most prominent Muslim woman in British public life to wear a headscarf, a powerful symbol of a faith she has accommodated with her passionate leftwing politics. She is standing as a candidate for the tiny and fractured Respect party.
In some streets around the new constituency of Hall Green, her poster is on every window; since her narrow defeat in 2005, she has built up support through her work as a local councillor, as well as building a national profile through her appearances on the BBC’s TV Question Time politics show. She might just topple Labour in an area which in 1997 it counted as one of its safest. Boundary changes have brought much of the old Sparkbrook and Small Heath constituency (Labour majority: 19,526) into the new Hall Green.
Yaqoob is one of a small group who have a good chance of making history as the first British Muslim women MPs. Her result is looking close, while across Birmingham, Shabana Mahmood is fighting for the Ladywood seat. In Bolton in northwest England, Yasmin Qureshi inherits a big Labour majority in Bolton South, and Rushanara Ali could well take the London seat of Bethnal Green back for Labour. Since 2005 there have been four Muslim MPs, all men, but 2010 looks likely to be the breakthrough year for Muslim women’s political representation. Yaqoob’s headscarf at Westminster might prompt a few headlines - both here and abroad - but few will fully grasp the small revolution these women are spearheading in these communities, and how they are introducing to British electoral politics a constituency of Muslim women, many of whom don’t speak English and who were in previous elections confined to the backroom, the private family areas of the house, whenever canvassers or candidates came to the doorstep.
http://newageislam.com/a-british-muslim-woman-who-could-make-history/islamic-world-news/d/2755
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5:45 AM
Moderate Islamist here
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