There are few places in the Western world where a Muslim could become the mayor of a major city. But it has happened in London. Sadiq Khan is the city's first Muslim mayor, indeed the first Muslim mayor of any major Western city. On Friday, Khan beat Conservative Tory Zac Goldsmith. The tally - 1,310,143 votes to 994,614 – gave Khan a 13.6 percent margin of victory, the largest mandate of any politician in UK history.
The story does not end there. It is also one of rags to riches, pitting Khan, the son of a bus driver from Pakistan, against Goldsmith, son of a billionaire. Neither pedigree nor wealth mattered in the end. It is ironic that whereas somebody with Khan’s religion could not, at least these days, reach such an elevated post in the West, it is the West which forever espouses the belief that fairy tale endings could happen to somebody like Khan.
But the campaign had not been without controversy. Injected into it was race and religion. Goldsmith peddled race politics in his campaign against his rival. In one article, Goldsmith accused Khan and the leaders of the Labour Party of having, "whether intentionally or not, repeatedly legitimized those with extremist views."
Goldsmith described Khan as "dangerous" and accused his opponent of giving "platforms, oxygen and even cover" to Islamic extremists —a charge repeated by Prime Minister David Cameron and other senior Conservatives.
Those were cheap shots, the result of a political smear campaign against the Labour Party ahead of local elections. Islamophobia was in the air as Goldsmith attempted to scare and divide voters, tactics which could damage relations with the Muslim community, especially in a country where the current threat level for international terrorism is at severe, meaning an attack is highly likely.
In the end, the negative campaign run by the Tories failed. Aside from being unnecessarily divisive, the tactics were directed at people in the same boat, Muslim and non-Muslim, both living in the same shadow of terror attacks that have struck Paris and Brussels in recent months and which struck London in 2007.
And again, in the end, many Londoners seem to be more concerned about issues such as the high cost of housing and transport. Those issues affect all, Muslim and non-Muslim alike.
This politics of fear is akin to what’s happening in the US presidential race, where the presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump’s populist and nativist American-style negative campaigning and fear-mongering all but ensure that if London could elect a Muslim mayor, the same could never happen, at least these days, in let’s say, New York.
The mayoral campaign was part of elections held across the United Kingdom on Thursday, for mayoral positions, local council seats, and parliamentary and assembly seats in Scotland and Wales. It was also taking place within a wider context of an anti-Semitism scandal gripping Britain's Labour Party, which has seen Labour MPs and councilors suspended after making or posting anti-Jewish remarks. One of those accused of having made anti-Semitic remarks was Ken Livingstone, the last Labour figure to serve as London mayor.
Critics have accused the left-wing party of being too accommodating of those with anti-Semitic and Islamist views, prompting the party's leader Jeremy Corbyn to set up an independent inquiry into the allegations.
In the midst of what is viewed as anti-Semitism and anti-Islamism, in steps Sadiq Khan, a practicing Muslim who will now have wide-ranging powers over London. Khan will now help steer a proudly multicultural city of 8.6 million people — more than one million of them Muslims, about 12 percent of the population. Khan beat out 11 other candidates who were standing for mayor of London. Despite his religion and socio-economic background, he prevailed.
