Burqa-Defending Tory Peer Faces Probe for Hamas-Linked Event with Corbyn

Tory Lord Sheikh
Wiki Commons/Parliament
Liam Deacon

Senior Conservative MPs are demanding an investigation into a Muslim Tory Lord for attending the same controversial conference as Jeremy Corbyn, where Hamas compared Israel to Islamic State terrorists.

Mohamed Iltaf Sheikh, or Lord Sheikh, just last week demanded the former foreign Secretary Boris Johnson be “severely” dealt with for joking about the Islamic face veil, calling for the whip to be withdrawn for criticizing the radical Islamic practice.

However, in 2014 the peer accepted a trip to Tunisia, paid for by the Tunisian government, to attend a “peace conference” which was largely dedicated to pro-Palestine campaigning.

Senior Hamas members attended. The group is considered a terrorist organization by the European Union, United States, Canada, and Israel.

The Lord says he did not meet the Hamas members and insists he did not attend the wreath laying with Labour leader Mr Corbyn, after the conference, where anti-Semitic Hamas terrorists were commemorated.

According to the Mail Online, Tory MPs Robert Halfon and Zac Goldsmith have lodged a formal complaint with the party, calling the event “disgraceful.”

In a letter to Conservative HQ, the politicians wrote: “We cannot, as a Party, rightly and robustly criticise the Leader of the Opposition for his attendance at this conference while allowing the attendance of a Conservative Peer at the same event to pass without comment or complaint.

“To do so would be to indulge in hypocrisy and double standards. In our opinion, Lord Sheikh’s attendance at this conference was hugely disappointing and raises significant questions that need to be answered.”

Mr Goldsmith added on Twitter: “If this man is not immediately expelled from the Conservative Party, the Party hierarchy’s complaints about Corbyn will look entirely cynical.”

During one speech at “peace” the event, the former Tunisian foreign minister Othman Jerandi ranted, “ISIS and Israel are the same thing”, and another said violent attacks are “magnificent.”

The senior Hamas leader Oussama Hamdan presented a “four-point vision to fight against Israel” and hailed the group’s “great success on the military and national levels”.

Shortly before, he told Lebanese media the ancient antiemetic trope that Jewish people drink the blood of Christians is “not a figment of imagination or something taken from a film. It is a fact.”

Lord Sheikh played down the claims, saying: “There may have been Hamas. I did not meet any Hamas people, I am very careful, obviously… So I don’t sympathise with Hamas, I have no dealing with Hamas.”

The politician was made a peer by the Tory party in 2006, a year after he established the Conservative Muslim Forum.

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