London Mayoral hopeful Sadiq Khan spoke at a political meeting in an Islamic centre where women were told to use a separate entrance, it has been revealed.
Although both sexes were welcome at the event held at the Tooting Islamic Centre the invitation said “Ladies entrance on Lessingham Avenue next to the Snooker Club”,.
The Labour candidate spoke at a talk about the Palestinian conflict in 2004 alongside a Hamas supporter, a preacher who backed an Islamic state, an activist who has threatened "fire throughout the world", a man who led a boycott of Holocaust Memorial Day in 2005 and a Muslim leader who called for attacks on the British Royal Navy if it blocked arms smuggling in Gaza.
Also on the platform was a controversial vicar, Rev Dr Stephen Sizer, who was forbidden by the Church of England from using any social media for six months in 2015 after he used it to spout conspiracy theories that Israel was responsible for 9/11.
Mr Khan, who was Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Tooting at the time, said he attended the event in his capacity “as a human rights lawyer”,the London Evening Standard reports.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who was a backbench MP at the time, was also listed as a speaker on the flyer but his office has said he did not attend.
The three-hour conference, called “Palestine - the suffering still goes on” was organised by an NGO called Friends of Al-Aqsa, which was one of 25 pro-Palestinian organisations that had their bank accounts closed by the Co-op Bank in January “without explanation”.
It comes after Mr Khan’s rival, Conservative candidate Zac Goldsmith, has been criticised over comments saying the Labour MP gives “platform, cover and oxygen to extremists”.
Mr Goldsmith has dismissed an accusation by Labour’s Yvette Cooper that he is running a “dog-whistle racism” campaign against Mr Khan who is currently 20 points ahead of him in the polls.
He told the Huffington Post it was “an absurd thing to say” and he had been running an “overwhelmingly positive campaign”.
A spokesperson for Mr Khan told the Standard: “Sadiq would always prefer men and women not to be separated at events he attends, but he respects the freedom of Londoners’ faiths. Politicians from all parties attend events at temples, synagogues, gurdwaras and mosques where men and women sit separately.
“Sadiq attended events like this to speak about the human rights of Palestinians in his capacity as a human rights lawyer, a campaigner for mainstream civil liberty organisations and as a candidate and eventually MP. It was his job to speak out about human rights.”
