Hawzah News Agency  - (London - UK) - Despite rising anti-Muslim sentiment, the 2019 election saw the highest number of Muslim candidates ever enter parliament.

In spite of rising Islamophobia, a record number of Muslims were elected to the House of Commons in the UK’s recent election.

Muslim candidates won 19 seats in the December 12 poll, four higher than in the last election in 2017. 

However, Muslims in the UK are far from a monolithic voter block, their 3.4 million population is considered electorally significant.

Out of the 220 women elected to parliament, 10 were Muslims.

Of those elected, 15 are members of the Labour Party and the other four are Conservatives.

During the campaign, the Labour Party fielded 33 Muslim candidates, while the ruling Conservative Party put forward 22.

Despite making up the numbers in the House of Commons, many Muslims are pessimistic about their future in the country after Boris Johnson’s Conservatives won a landslide.

 In 2018, Johnson caused a media storm when he compared Muslim women wearing the face veil to postal boxes.

There is a “palpable sense of fear amongst Muslim communities” in the UK, the Muslim Council of Britain, the UK’s largest Muslim organisation stressed in its statement.

“We entered the election campaign period with longstanding concerns about bigotry in our politics and our governing party. Now we worry that Islamophobia is ‘oven-ready’ for the government. Mr Johnson has been entrusted with huge power, and we pray it is exercised responsibly for all Britons,” the Muslim body’s Secretary-General Harun Khan said.