Twenty-five Conservative party members have been suspended after posting Islamophobic or racist comments on social media.
The members, who were found to have been posting on a pro-Jacob Rees-Mogg Facebook group, have been suspended by the party pending an investigation.
One comment mentioned entering a mosque with a rifle while another called to “stop the Islamification of Britain”.
“I was going through a few magazines the other day down at the local Mosque. I was really enjoying myself. Then the rifle jammed,” one comment said.
The posts were found by the @MatesJacob Twitter account and then passed over to Conservative headquarters by Buzzfeed News.
The latest series of suspensions come only weeks after 14 other Conservative party members were also suspended for posting Islamophobic comments online.
The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), which has repeatedly called for an independent inquiry into Islamophobia within the party, described the revelations as “astonishing”.
“We’ve seen MPs, councillors and members engage in bigotry that should have no place in a modern Conservative Party,” a spokesperson for the MCB said.
“Yet the constructive call by Muslim communities for an independent inquiry into the issue has been ignored again and again.”
It comes as the Tories were described as being “institutionally Islamophobic” by the party’s former chair, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi.
“The mayoral campaign clearly showed me that there is a strand within the party for whom Islamophobia is a deliberate political strategy – and that breaks my heart,” she said on talkRADIO.
A Conservative spokesperson said: “We were aware of this matter, and action has been taken. Party members who have been found to have made inappropriate comments have been suspended pending further investigation.”
