The father of the Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar has been accused of “glorifying terrorists” for describing Palestinians killed on October 7 after 1,400 Israelis had been slaughtered in an attack by Hamas as “martyrs struggling for their freedom”.
Hours after the terrorist incursion into Israel, Mohammad Sarwar, Britain’s first Muslim MP who later became governor of Punjab in Pakistan, urged Muslims to pray for Palestinians who had been killed to “achieve the highest status in paradise”.
“If Muslims realise their strength, no one can defeat them,” he wrote in Urdu on Twitter/X, which was translated independently for The Sunday Times by two native speakers.
The veteran politician failed to distinguish between Hamas fighters killed by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) during the attack and Palestinians in Gaza but the timing of the social media post and reference to the “struggle for freedom” has prompted intense criticism of his comments.
Jackson Carlaw, the former Scottish Conservative leader and the MSP for Eastwood, which has Scotland’s highest Jewish population, said: “This is a disgusting message from Mohammad Sarwar. He appears to be glorifying terrorists and praising the cowards who attacked innocent civilians in Israel.”
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Anas Sarwar condemned Hamas “unequivocally” in the days after the incursion into Israel. “I condemn terrorist attacks,” he said. “There’s never any excuse for that.”
More than 1,400 people were killed in Israel, including children, and almost 5,500 people have been injured, Israeli officials said. The IDF said that 203 people were taken hostage by Hamas and it is believed they are being held in Gaza.
Israel’s retribution for the Hamas attack began three hours later with missile strikes hitting the centre of Gaza City and its few skyscrapers, as well as other sites on the strip, which Israel said were military targets. Videos showed Palestinians carrying bodies through the streets.
At 6.54pm on October 7, Mohammad Sarwar, 71, who has 1.9 million followers on Twitter/X, mostly in Pakistan, wrote in Urdu: “The whole nation stands with Palestinians, who have been for decades bearing Israeli oppression and barbarity, in their struggle for the right to self-determination.
“If Muslims realise their strength, no one can defeat them. We pray for the highest status in paradise for those Palestinians who have become martyrs struggling for their freedom. May Allah protect the Palestinians. We demand the international community end the enmity of Israel and ensure the protection of the innocent citizens of Palestine.”
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Mohammad Sarwar contests the translation of “shaheed” to mean “martyrs” in his posts, insisting that the word is not loaded with the same religious or emotive significance in Urdu as in English. However, none of his social media posts express sympathy for Israelis who died nor condemn the Hamas attack.
“I would dispute the literal translation,” he said. “To be clear, Islam teaches that killing one life is like killing the whole of humanity and saving one life is like saving the whole of humanity. I was expressing my desire for a peaceful resolution to the conflict and recognising all those innocent lives lost due to conflict, occupation and siege. It was clearly not a comment about Hamas or their horrific attack on October 7.
“I condemn all those that target innocent civilians and don’t wish to see any Palestinian or Israeli lives lost. I have always campaigned for a two state solution and peace.”
Mohammad Sarwar has also failed to delete a post blaming Israel for a missile attack near a Gazan hospital. The Hamas-run health ministry said almost 500 were killed in the incident, though Israeli military say the number was far lower.
The exact cause of the blast is still contested but UK, French and US analysis by weapons experts and overhead imagery suggests it was likely to have been a misfiring rocket from Palestinian militants and not Israel.
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One day after the deadly explosion in the car park of Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, Mohammad Sarwar posted on Twitter/X that he condemned in “the strongest terms, the heinous acts of Israelis and the painful loss of innocent lives and #PalestineGenocide of the Palestinians resulting from the Israeli attack on the hospitals in Gaza”.
Mohammad Sarwar was elected for the Labour Party in Govan in 1997 after having built a multimillion-pound cash-and-carry warehouse. He left Westminster in 2010 and became the governor of Punjab from 2013 until 2015 and then again from 2018 until last year.
Anas Sarwar, who in his twenties wrote speeches for his father, including a tirade against the war in Iraq, took over Mohammad Sarwar’s Westminster seat in the 2010 general election but lost his job in 2015 when Labour was humiliated north of the border. He was elected to the Scottish parliament a year later and took over the leadership reins from Richard Leonard in 2021.
He is wealthy in his own right. In 2016 his quarter share in the cash-and-carry business — now transferred into the name of his wife and children — was valued at between £2.7 million and £4.8 million.
A Scottish Labour spokesman said: “Anas Sarwar has repeatedly and unequivocally condemned Hamas for their terror attacks and said there is no justification for the loss of innocent life and the targeting of civilians. He continues to call for the immediate release of hostages, free flow of humanitarian assistance, an end to rocket fire out of and into Gaza and for a meaningful peace process that delivers freedom and security to Israelis and Palestinians.”
