I read this in the Eastern Daily Press this morning but I have gone to the local paper the East London Advertiser for their report.
GOVERNMENT Minister Jim Fitzpatrick has spoken out after he and his wife were refused entry as a couple to attend a wedding at the London Muslim Centre.
He is accusing the centre of imposing ‘stricter’ segregation rules than before, after he and his GP wife Sheila were directed to separate rooms for men and women.
Mr Fitzpatrick, the local MP for Poplar & Canning Town in London’s East End, had been invited to attend a constituent’s wedding on Sunday, unaware that men and women would be segregated.
He blamed the Islamic Forum of Europe which is based in the same building.
“The stranglehold influence of the Islamic Forum is present more than ever before,” Mr Fitzpatrick told the East London Advertiser on Monday. “We are trying to build social cohesion in a community—but this is not the way forward.”
The Forum adheres to Shariah law while describing itself as “helping to develop the Muslim community and benefit the wider society.”
The London Muslim Centre, which is next to the East London Mosque in Whitechapel, insists it has always had separate men and women at weddings.
But Mr Fitzpatrick, Minister for Food and Farming, has been to a string of weddings and events at the centre and says he has seen a change in rules in recent months which most of East London’s Muslim community do not want.
The centre’s website states that “free mixing” is not permitted in weddings.
The Islamic Forum insists the centre has its own proceedings and regulations and gets advice from the imam. Their spokesman said: “Those who get married at the centre are religious people and you will find any Muslim centre you go to has segregation.”
While I think that Mr Fitzgerald was quite right not to stay where his wife was not welcome not everyone agrees. Ghastly Georgie Galloway thinks his behaviour was an insult.
Mr Galloway called his walk-out a “disgusting insult, cynically motivated by political opportunism.”
He said: “If you don’t want to go to a Muslim wedding, don’t go. But don’t turn up and then carry out a wholly artificial politically motivated stunt."
He added: “I am amazed and astounded by this behaviour by a Government minister who represents a very substantial Muslim minority in his constituency. I honestly did not think anyone could stoop so low. Fitzpatrick really has got down in the gutter in his increasingly desperate attempt to hold onto his Parliamentary seat.”
Mr Galloway is challenging Mr Fitzpatrick for the redrawn constituency of Poplar & Limehouse at the next General Election.
Mr Fitzpatrick is obviously thinking not just of his non Muslim constitutents who do not want to see sharia law practised in their town, but the Muslim ones who have personal reasons for not wanting to live under a greater stranglehold of sharia.