CAIRO – Amid rising tensions in London mayoral race, Labour candidate Sadiq Khan has lamented that the Conservative party Islamophobic attacks targeting the first Muslim candidate are alienating young British Muslims from politics.

“Parents have come to me and said their kids have been put off a career in politics because of Islamophobic attacks,” said Khan, The Guardian reported on Thursday, April 21.

“They’re going to become more desperate. They’re going to be more divisive. And we can’t let them,” he added, referring to Zac Goldsmith’s rival mayoral campaign.

Khan was speaking during a Wednesday’s event at the Muslim News awards, attended by Greg Clark, the communities secretary, and high-profile Muslims from sport, media, business and the armed forces.

The Labour MP’s comments came after David Cameron stepped up Tory accusations that Khan had links to extremists.

In the Commons, Cameron said he was “concerned about Labour’s candidate as mayor of London who has appeared again and again and again” on a stage with people he described as extremists.

The prime minister was met with MPs cries of “racist” in the House of Commons.

“The prime minister’s desperate dog-whistle has now totally backfired,” Neil Coyle, a London Labour MP said.

“It now turns out that Suliman Gani campaigned for the Tories at the 2015 General Election, met Zac Goldsmith in November last year and campaigned against Sadiq Khan because of his support for same sex marriage.”

Khan accused the Conservatives of running a “nasty, dog-whistling campaign that is designed to divide London’s communities” and said he was “disappointed that the prime minister has today joined in”.

Islamophobic

Senior Labour figures have accused Cameron of using a strategy based on Islamophobic.

“They would not be raising these questions if Sadiq was not a Muslim,” Former shadow business secretary Chuka Ummuna, the Labour MP for Streatham, said.

“If our mayoral candidate was a non-Muslim human rights lawyer, they would not be making any of these allegations at all.

“Our own prime minister is basically saying to young Muslim boys and girls that if you wanted to stand for one of the most prominent elected positions in our country, you will face this outrageous prejudice from people holding the highest office in our country. It’s cynical, and it’s deliberate, and it’s desperate – because Zac is losing,” he said.

Deborah Mattinson, the founding director of strategy advice and research firm Britain Thinks, described the attacks as “desperate stuff and somewhat at odds with Zac’s languid style”.

“They will have tested it, and will know that it will help, perhaps with older, suburban voters,” she said.

“Sadiq should win with a massive majority, given the demographic of London and past performance. But differential turnout may make it very difficult for him to do more than scrape home.”