Hardly any Muslims wear poppies … and with good reason
I won’t be wearing a poppy on Remembrance Sunday next week and neither will the overwhelming majority of British Muslims. And there’s a simple reason for that – the poppy is a symbol of support for the British army and most Muslims in this country cannot support an institution which has regularly killed their brethren over the last decades and more, writes Roshan Muhammed Salih.
The sight of people wearing the red poppy in the weeks leading up to Remembrance Sunday is extremely common in the UK and on mainstream TV channels poopy-wearing almost seems to be compulsory. But go to any Muslim area of Britain or observe any Muslim on the street or workplace and hardly any of them will be wearing one.
The poppy has been used since 1920 to commemorate soldiers who’ve died in war. It is especially prominent in the UK where poppies are sold by The Royal British Legion for their “Poppy Appeal”, which supports all current and former British military personnel. And for Muslims this is precisely the problem.
Most of us have no issue commemorating the war dead in a general sense, but the fact is that the poppy is widely perceived as being a symbol of the British army itself in a similar way to how the “Help For Heroes” campaign is. And make no mistake, this is an army that has invaded and occupied two Muslim countries since 2001 – Iraq and Afghanistan – and has a general history of slaughter and oppression against Muslims.
British military interventions
In Iraq the invading armies literally opened the gates of hell with consequences that would lead to the deaths of around a million people and would destroy a whole nation. And of course the British army was responsible for several atrocities committed against Iraqi civilians, the Baha Moussa case being just one of them.
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Hardly any Muslims wear poppies … and with good reason | Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain
