LONDON -- "Can I count on you on Thursday?"

"Inshallah," answers a tall woman whose face is ringed by a brown shawl -- "God willing."

Max Nash, Associated Press George Galloway, a former parliamentary member of the British Labor Party, is representing a new party -- the anti-war Respect Party -- and running for election to a new seat. Click photo for larger image.

Her questioner is George Galloway, a former Labor member of Parliament from Scotland who, while representing a new party and running for election to a new seat, serves as an improbable emblem of a swelling current in British politics.

This deeply controversial figure was greeting parents by a school yard in East London yesterday in the constituency of Bethnal Green and Bow, a poor, heavily Muslim district held by the Labor Party since 1945.

Knots of mothers, and a few fathers, were waiting outside the St. John Church of England Primary School to collect their children and, two days before the election, to hear Galloway's exhortations for them to turn away from the party that most of them have supported for years.

Working the crowd with him was Jackie Turner, a doctor who has temporarily left her practice to rear her young children.

"I wasn't particularly political before I got involved with the anti-war movement," Turner said. "But when 2 million people marched against the war and the government ignored us, Respect [her new political party] was a natural evolution."

Nearly half of the voters in this district are Bangladeshi, with other Muslims making up another 10 percent. Muslims had long been considered reliable votes for Labor, but the Iraq war has shaken that allegiance.

The Muslim Association of Britain has urged its community to turn out to vote tomorrow and to oppose any candidates who, like the incumbent in Bethnal Green and Bow, Labor's Oona King, supported the war and the tough anti-terrorism law that the Blair administration pushed through after Sept. 11.

The Muslim association's Web site claims that as many as 40 seats in Parliament represent populations that are at least 10 percent Muslim. All were held by Labor until one fell to a Liberal-Democrat in a special election last year.

Tomorrow's nationwide elections could be remembered as a turning point in party allegiance and already are seen as a symbol of the growing political clout of the Muslim vote in Britain and across Western Europe.

"For decades, Labor was able to take the Muslim vote for granted; not any more" declares the association's Web site. "British Muslims know they can no longer afford to give away their votes cheaply."

At about 1.8 million, Muslims represent just 3 percent of Great Britain's population, but they are concentrated in urban areas and are among the nation's fastest growing groups. They are, on average, younger and tend to have larger families than those of most other ethnic groups.

"Armed with the power of the vote and quickly learning the mechanics of lobbying, the Muslim street of Europe is on its way to having more political weight than the Arab street of Egypt or Saudi Arabia.," wrote Omer Taspinar, a scholar at the Brookings Institute, in an article last year in Foreign Policy. Taspinar pointed out that the Muslim birth rate in all of Europe is three times that of the majority, projecting that the Muslim population would double by 2015 while the rest the population would shrink by 3.5 percent.

According to the polling organization MORI, British Muslims' priorities on issues largely mirror those of other religious or ethnic groups -- except for the war in Iraq and the sense of being singled out by terrorism laws.

Despite the dominance of the Iraq war in the British campaign, pollsters and other analysts have noted that it has slipped back sharply among the priorities of most voters. For the general public, the war's political impact derives mostly from the fact that it raises questions about whether Prime Minister Tony Blair can be trusted. For many Muslims, however, the war remains a powerful voting issue on its own terms.

Galloway is a short, dapper man who held his seat in Scotland for four terms. He was drummed out of the Labor Party after he was reported to have urged British troops not to fight in Iraq. Before that, he was an outspoken critic of the embargo against Saddam Hussein's regime and raised money to provide medical care for Iraqi children.

The target of intense criticism for his pre-war activities in Iraq, Galloway won a major libel suit against the Daily Telegraph newspaper after it reported that documents discovered after the fall of Baghdad showed that he or his charity had received payments from Saddam's regime, a charge he has strongly denied.

Under a bright afternoon sun yesterday, Galloway chatted and joked with the constituents he hopes to represent in the new Parliament. He passed out Respect flyers, headlined, "No More War, No More Lies." He cajoled voters with lines such as, "Oona King voted to send our troops to kill and be killed in Iraq. She repeated the lies Tony Blair told."

Galloway made his pitch as Iraq continued to dominate the last days of the national campaign. After a series of leaks on the Blair government's pre-war actions, the death of the first British soldier lost in combat since January, the 87th overall, brought new focus to Iraq with the widow's televised statement that she blamed the prime minister for his death.

Respect is fielding two dozen candidates in urban districts across the country. Galloway said optimistically that as many as five or six could win.

Other parties, including the Liberal-Democrats, also are attempting to capitalize on Muslim estrangement with the Blair administration. Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, is facing a surprisingly tough race to retain his normally safe seat in Blackburn, a northern constituency with a heavily Muslim population.

"It's difficult to get a handle on the Muslim vote," said Mark Gill, political analyst for the MORI polling firm. "In the past they have voted overwhelmingly for Labor. Now, if they stay at home or drift to the Liberal-Democrats, they could play a role in taking seats from Labor."

Galloway was working the Muslim vote assiduously yesterday.

"Tony Blair is about as welcome here as a pork pie at a Muslim wedding," he said while canvassing.

One pale-skinnned father gave him a friendly, "Hey George," and took a piece of campaign literature as he left the school yard.

"Please note the white support," Galloway instructed an observer.

"Labor set out to polarize this race," he claimed. "Their campaign is focused solely on the non-Muslim areas; we've been everywhere."

Also greeting Galloway yesterday was Majid Ghdhban, an unemployed Iraqi engineer who emigrated to England in 1984. As his son Eamon, 5, and his daughter Sarah, 4, played behind him, he explained that he will vote for Galloway, but not solely because of the war. He said he wasn't satisfied with "the government record on social services and on foreign policy in general."

Whatever his level of support in the Muslim community, Galloway has been taking some shots from the mainstream media lately. The Evening Standard reported yesterday that there may have been massive absentee ballot fraud on his behalf. Two days earlier, the Sunday Times reported that Galloway's Palestinian wife was planning to divorce him because she believed he was involved with other women.

Galloway nonetheless believes that destiny is on his side.

"I've been elected four times," he pointed out. "If you believe in Kismet, this is my fifth election; I'm fifth on the ballot; and this election is on 5/5/05."