Saturday, May 16, 2015
Why Muslims cannot trust the legal system posted by Richard Seymour
Shortly before the most recent general elections, there occurred a legal coup d'etat against a democratically elected local authority. The overthrow was justified on the basis of a series of racist claims against the Bangladeshi community of Tower Hamlets. In a new article for Critical Legal Thinking, Nadine El-Enany anatomises the logic of this judicial putsch, and the implications it has for institutional racism:“Let justice be done though the heavens fall”, Deputy High Court Judge, Richard Mawrey declared as he delivered a recent ruling which voided Lutfur Rahman’s reelection as Mayor of Tower Hamlets on 22 May 2014. Almost 37,000 people voted for Rahman in an election which saw a record turnout. In a 200 page judgement, Mawrey found Rahman guilty of a series of corrupt and illegal practices. But this verdict is not just. It rests on a failure to understand the meaning and extent of racism in Britain today and is itself based on racist and Islamophobic reasoning. How can Muslims in Britain be expected to have faith in a legal system that produces a judgement such as this?