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SearchToday in Islamophobia: In the UK, Lucy Connolly, the wife of a Conservative councillor located in Northampton, has been arrested on the suspicion of “inciting racial hatred” after she called for hotels with asylum seekers to be set on fire on X, while Muslims across the UK vow to protect mosques as far-right mobs continue to target the community, and lastly, a prominent anti-racist group, “The Three Hijabis” are urging the government to ramp up its commitment to gender-based Islamophobia, as Muslim women across the nation have reached out to the group with concerns for their safety. Our recommended read of the day is by Peter Oborne for Middle East Eye who argues that British mainstream media and politicians, who promoted Islamophobia for decades, are responsible for the outbreak of far-right mob violence targeting Muslims and people of color across the country. This and more below:
United Kingdom
Far-right riots: UK media and politicians are almost wholly to blame | Recommended Read
The racist thugs who terrorised, intimidated and in some cases tried to murder Muslims and other minority groups in the UK over the last few days are in a deep sense victims themselves. These generally ignorant people now face jail and the destruction of their lives. Yet they have been taught to hate. To use the official language more often applied to Muslims than the far right, they have been "radicalised". Among the radicalisers have been the Conservative Party, including successive prime ministers and home secretaries. The mainstream media - and not just the tabloid press - have also played a destructive and sinister role. So also have prestigious think tanks such as the Gatestone Institute in the United States, which propagated the noxious and false idea that Britain has "no-go areas". There’s no getting away from the fact that the most significant immediate instigator of the violence has been far-right activist Tommy Robinson, via a series of incendiary social media interventions from the poolside of a Mediterranean hotel. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, a highly sophisticated politician, was too smart to follow Robinson’s example and refer directly to false stories circulating on social media. Speaking ahead of the violence, he nevertheless suggested the truth about the Southport stabbings was being withheld, and questioned why the incident was not being treated as terror-related - the kind of dog-whistle politics at which Farage is expert. It is therefore easy to see why Brendan Cox, widower of the Labour MP Jo Cox, who was murdered by a far-right activist on the eve of the Brexit referendum, said the remarks made Farage "nothing better than a Tommy Robinson in a suit". But it should not be forgotten that Farage, and the poisonous bigotry and Islamophobia he represents, have been tolerated and enabled by British journalists and newspaper editors. For years, British Muslims have been lied about, smeared, demonised and subject to one moral panic after another. read the complete article
UK riots: Muslims vow to protect UK mosques from far-right mobs
Muslims have defiantly vowed to protect mosques across the UK after they were attacked by far-right mobs in nightly riots that show no signs of abating. More than a dozen towns and cities across the UK have seen outbreaks of violence, spurred on by right-wing agitators on social media in the wake of the killing of three children at a summer dance class on Merseyside. Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced a “standing army” of specialist police officers would be set up to deal with rioting and unrest. Since the killings in Southport last Monday, nightly violence has broken out with clashes between mobs and police, and attacks on mosques and hotels housing asylum seekers. read the complete article
UK riots: British Muslims in Liverpool working to heal
Something worrying has happened in Liverpool since far-right and racist riots began rocking cities in England and Northern Ireland last week. Muslim women have begun exchanging safety tips online. "Stay in groups, keep your car windows up and doors locked," one post reads. Children of color have been too scared to show up to the local summer vacation youth club. The UK's oldest mosque now keeps its gates chained shut most of the day. An interior ministry official keeps watch from inside to monitor for potential threats. But something remarkable has happened, too. Local Imam Adam Kelwick is beaming as he breezes in to lead prayer at the Abdullah Quilliam Mosque. He said this is because he's been busy "building bridges." Kelwick caught global attention when he was photographed crossing a line of counter-protesters to embrace a man in a crowd chanting anti-Islam slogans outside his mosque last weekend. "We walked over to their side and we shared food. We shared smiles. We talked. We listened," he told DW in Liverpool. read the complete article
UK riots: Are politicians and journalists enabling violence, racism and Islamophobia?
Is the language used by: politicians, celebrities, journalists and in headlines enabling violence across the UK? It's been seven days since the Southport mosque attack, over 400 arrests have been made, mosques and Muslim graves have been vandalised, hotels housing asylum seekers set on fire, shops looted and destroyed and violent attacks on people of colour. But the media isn't describing these as acts of terrorism, hate marches, racist or Islamophobia. Instead they are using language like: 'clashes', 'far-right activists', 'disorder', 'thuggery', 'pro-British marches' and 'anti-immigration demonstrations'. But why does the language used matter? Can carefully chosen language and obvious double standards really fuel violence? read the complete article
Councillor resigns over Islamophobic Facebook post
A councillor has resigned after being accused of posting Islamophobic comments on social media. Screenshots shared with the BBC showed comments from a profile in the name of Stockton councillor Susan Scott suggesting Muslims would "do whatever it takes" to make the whole world Islamic. Stockton Borough Council's Labour leader Bob Cook said the Tory councillor had "done the right thing and resigned" in the wake of criticism. The authority's Conservative group leader Tony Riordan confirmed Ms Scott's resignation following "a recent social media post", with a by-election now being arranged. The post, which also said "we ignore this threat at our peril", was made on a Facebook page dedicated to local politics. read the complete article
UK urged to engage with Muslim groups after Islamophobic rioting
The UK’s Labour government is being called upon to engage with Muslim organisations, after far-right rioting continued to target Muslim communities across Britain. The rioting, which began last week, continued on Monday night in Belfast, Plymouth and Darlington, the latter of which saw groups of far-right crowds gather in the North Lodge Park area, in the vicinity of a mosque. Mosques have been targeted for several days now, including in Leeds, Liverpool, Sunderland, Middlesbrough and Hastings. In Burnley, a police investigation was launched after gravestones in the Muslim section of a cemetery were vandalised. Nearly 400 people have been arrested since the violent unrest began. read the complete article
Anti-racism Muslim group urge government to ramp up safety commitments for women after riots
A prominent anti-racist Muslim group are urging the government to ramp up its commitment to gender-based Islamophobia, The Independent can reveal. Muslim communities, including women, are fearing for their lives amid widespread race riots around Britain across the past week which have left dozens of people injured and hundreds arrested. Shaista Aziz, Amna Abdullatif and Huda Jawad, who are known as “The Three Hijabis” due to their heritage and Islamic religious dress, have been contacted by Muslim women across the country with worries and reports of their hijabs being pulled off in the street. Yet, there is no specific government strategy in place to safeguard Muslim women, despite the government’s stated “mission” to protect women and girls. “Muslim women being afraid to travel into their town and city centres – making them no-go areas for them, is gendered Islamophobia,” a statement, first seen by The Independent, from The Three Hijabis says. read the complete article
Some are calling these far-right riots an outpouring of legitimate anger. They are not
Yesterday, a horde of far-right racists besieged, attacked and tried to burn down a hotel housing asylum seekers in Rotherham. A mob chanted “burn it” and “set it on fire” as they pushed a flaming bin through a shattered door at the base of the building. Terrified asylum seekers looked down through broken windows upon a crowd calling for their deaths. Similar scenes played out later that day at a hotel in Tamworth. These events made up just a fraction of what is probably the worst week of far-right violence since the second world war. With no central organiser or single group behind this wave of hate, it reflects the nature of the contemporary far right, where trouble on our streets is planned and encouraged by vast decentralised networks of activists online. But while the role of the far right is fundamental, this racist violence has emerged out of an existing climate of prejudice stoked by more mainstream actors. What we have observed is that, while the trigger for this wave of unprecedented far-right activity was the heartbreaking attack on children in Southport, the planned protests quickly became expressive of wider hostility to multiculturalism, and anti-Muslim and anti-migrant prejudice, as well as a visceral streak of populist anti-government sentiment. read the complete article
Wife of Tory councillor arrested for racial hatred
The wife of a Conservative councillor has been arrested after she called for hotels with asylum seekers to be set on fire. In a now deleted post on her X account, Lucy Connolly, from Northampton, wrote: “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f****** hotels full of the b******* for all I care... If that makes me racist, so be it.” The childminder has since apologised, and said she had acted on “false and malicious” information. Northamptonshire Police said a 41-year-old woman had been arrested on suspicion of inciting racial hatred and remained in custody. read the complete article
International
As the far right riots in the UK, India offers a cautionary tale
In February 2002, 59 Hindu pilgrims perished when their train caught fire just outside Godhra station in the Indian state of Gujarat. The cause of the fire was never conclusively established; yet of the many unsubstantiated theories that still swirl around the fire, the one that had the most devastating impact on was the claim that the train had been set alight by a Muslim mob. What followed was three days of riots that resulted in the deaths of at least 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus, with another 223 people reported missing and 2,500 more injured. Civil society groups estimate that the actual death toll was closer to double that number. Over two decades have passed since the Godhra train fire, but Indian society is yet to come to terms with its aftermath. I’ve found myself thinking a lot about Godhra since three young girls were killed, and eight more children and two women injured, after being stabbed at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport last week. Online misinformation wrongly suggested their attacker was a Muslim man who had arrived in the UK in a small boat last year, sparking a frenzy of anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim riots in recent days. read the complete article