Londoners made the impossible possible in the Thursday’s mayoral elections when more than 1.3 million voters decided in favor of Sadiq Khan, a “Muslim”, “British-Pakistani” and “son of a bus driver”. I could have said former minister for communities or minister for transport under Prime Minister Gordon Brown or former shadow minister for London, but that might have sounded less appealing which is why all the global media outlets reported this news in more or less the same way.
Some of them applauded this development while others seemed skeptical about the election of a “Muslim” mayor in a world where a presidential hopeful of a super power is considering a ban on the entry of Muslims in his country.
We live in a stereotype-ridden world where people are judged by their gender, caste, skin color, religion, family background and several other such factors. These are primary factors through which we make our judgment. A person’s abilities, experience and talent comes later and in most of the cases we do not bother to consider them.
London mayoral election campaign was a glimpse of our modern day world. During campaign, the opposition party ran a repulsive and racist campaign that descended into a dirty slur and innuendo offensives against Sadiq Khan as a Muslim and his past as a human rights lawyer. They tried to establish links between Khan and religious extremists.
As a Labour party MP said that dog whistle politics is ineffective in a city without dogs. So majority of the Londoners voted for Khan without taking in consideration his religious affiliation or his humble background. They voted for him based on his election manifesto, his party’s action plan and his own previous performance as MP.
This is what happens in real democracies. The voters do not vote on the basis of caste, creed, religion or social status. Only in developing countries the candidates are judged through such parameters which is why they are developing for time immemorial.
In this whole scenario, it is not the Labour party or Sadiq Khan who are the real winners, but the Londoners. It is they who defied the norms, broke all stereotypes and rejected Islamophobia.
The election of Sadiq Khan was greeted with celebration in Pakistan. News of Khan’s win in the British capital featured on the front pages of all major Pakistani newspapers the next day. While there were some who took to Twitter to call out the “hypocrisy,” of Pakistanis when it comes to protecting their own country’s minority.
One of the tweet was, “Every Pakistani wants to celebrate Sadiq Khan in London, but no one will vote for a Sadiq Khan in Pakistan”, which is absolutely true. Neither we are going to vote for the candidate from a modest background nor will we vote for a candidate of religious minority.
If London elected a minority religion’s person without any silver-spoon upbringing, it’s a manifestation of how educated and refined that society is. We should think why we only elect people who live in palaces and travel in private jets or the people who divide us on religious grounds. We should have been introspective and pensive on Sadiq Khan’s win rather than ecstatic and jubilant. We should celebrate when the daughter or son of a non-Muslim cleaner in Lahore, Karachi or Islamabad become mayor of the city.