London’s Muslim mayor vows to serve ‘every single community’

London / Bloomberg

Sadiq Khan of Britain’s main opposition Labour Party took over as London’s first Muslim mayor on Saturday, facing down critics who used his religion against him by vowing to “represent every single community” in the capital.
Khan’s election is a challenge to the rise of anti-Muslim rhetoric by right-wing politicians including French National Front leader Marine Le Pen and presumptive US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who promises to ban Muslims from entering the country.
London is a city “that not only tolerates but celebrates diversity,” campaigner Doreen Lawrence said as Khan was sworn in Saturday. Lawrence, mother of Stephen Lawrence, a British teenager who was murdered in a racist attack in South East London in 1993, said the city had “chosen hope over fear.”
In brief remarks after taking the oath, Khan promised to be “a mayor for all Londoners.”
Khan beat Conservative Zac Goldsmith, who had questioned whether Khan’s links in the Muslim community made him a suitable person to keep the UK capital secure, with 1.3 million votes to 995,000. The new mayor was sworn in during a ceremony in London’s Southwark Cathedral Saturday. “I hope that we will never be offered such a stark choice again, a visibly emotional Khan said after the result was announced in London’s City Hall early on Saturday morning. “Fear doesn’t make us safer, it only makes us weaker and the politics of fear is simply not welcome in our city.” Governments across Europe have struggled to frame a policy to handle a record influx of refugees, many of them Muslims, fleeing the civil war in Syria and violence elsewhere in the Middle East. Some nations are building barriers, erecting fences or limiting border crossings to stem a refugee flow that topped 1 million just in Germany.
Some political leaders have pushed back against efforts to stop the migrants. Last month President Barack Obama said German Chancellor Angela Merkel was “on the right side of history” with her open-door stance on refugees, bolstering the leader whose popularity is weighed down at home because of the issue.
Khan was elected in the same week that Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokeswoman said he wouldn’t rescind his criticism of Trump over the Republican’s views on Muslims. The premier said in December that Trump’s assertion that all Muslims pose a security threat to America and his proposal to ban them from entering the country were “divisive, unhelpful and quite simply wrong.”
Cameron “has no intention of withdrawing his comments, which were made in response to comments Trump made about a ban on Muslims entering the US,” spokeswoman Helen Bower told reporters in London on May 4. Whether Trump becomes president “is a choice for the American people,” she said.
Trump also was criticized last year by former London Mayor Boris Johnson for his comments about Islam, which included an assertion that there are parts of the UK capital where “police are afraid for their own lives.” The Scottish National Party called for Trump to be banned from Britain in line with laws against preaching hate.
Khan, the first Muslim to attend UK cabinet meetings under Prime Minister Gordon Brown in 2009, becomes the most powerful member of that faith in elected office in Britain, in charge of an annual budget of 17 billion pounds ($25 billion) and responsible for policing, the transport network, planning and the environment in the U.K. capital.

Pakistan celebrates victory

Islamabad / AFP

The election of a Pakistani bus driver’s son as the mayor of London was greeted with celebration on Saturday in Pakistan, from where Sadiq Khan’s parents emigrated to Britain in the 1960s.
News of Khan’s win in the British capital featured on the front pages of all major Pakistani newspapers Saturday, while also causing a stir on social media.
“Congratulations @SadiqKhan 4 being elected mayor of London,” tweeted Bilawal Bhutto, leader of the opposition Pakistan People’s Party and son of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
“British Pakistanis need +ve rolemodel,” he added.
Rival opposition leader and former cricketer Imran Khan—whose ex-wife Jemima is the sister of Sadiq Khan’s principal opponent Zac Goldsmith—also tweeted his congratulations to the new mayor.
Elsewhere on social media most Pakistanis appeared to greet Khan’s win with pride, with messages marking the recent successes of other high-profile British Muslims—including former One Direction member Zayn Malik, who also has Pakistani heritage—going viral on Saturday.
Some could not resist pointing out the irony of the jubilant reaction in the deeply conservative country.
“Pakistani: Sadiq Khan won! Reporter: So you’d vote for a minority immigrant son of a bus driver as Mayor of Karachi? Pakistani: Are you mad?” tweeted newspaper columnist Bina Shah.
Khan has told media that he has relatives in the port megacity of Karachi, where his grandparents reportedly migrated after the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan in 1947, as well as Faisalabad in Punjab and the capital, Islamabad.