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SearchToday in Islamophobia: In the UK, police are investigating a startling incident last month where a severed pig’s head was mounted on the gates of a Muslim family’s home in Stockport, meanwhile in the United States, Montgomery County police seek public aid to find suspects in an anti-Muslim graffiti incident at Walt Whitman High School, with rewards offered for helpful tips, and lastly in India-occupied Kashmir, police have begun to distribute a flyer titled profiling mosques’ in which those surveyed are asked to provide personal information such as passport and bank account details of the people who run it, stoking further fears of surveillance. Our recommended read of the day is by Parveen Akhtar and Tahir Abbas for The Conversation on how several former Conservative Party members have defected to the far-right Reform Party, which they say is a calculated strategy to appeal to non-white voters despite the party’s history of stoking racism and Islamophobia. This and more below:
United Kingdom
Reform UK: will high-profile defections change the party’s image? | Recommended Read
As Farage faces renewed scrutiny over allegations of racism and antisemitism during his school days, the recruitment of high-profile, non-white former Conservatives is both politically convenient and strategically risky. Although Reform has undergone a rapid programme of “professionalisation” under its chairman, Zia Yusuf, these defections remain significant. For Farage, this is a familiar manoeuvre. His relationship with Islam has always been more complicated than that of Europe’s explicitly ethnonationalist right. He left Ukip in 2018 after then party leader Gerard Batten appointed far-right activist Tommy Robinson as an adviser to the party. Farage criticised Batten’s fixation with Islam, and said Ukip was drifting into a singularly anti-Muslim posture. He has repeatedly distanced himself from Robinson, and his clashes with figures such as former Reform MP Rupert Lowe reflect an ongoing effort to differentiate Reform from the far right. The aim is clear: to position Reform as uncompromising on immigration without being reducible to crude racial politics. The presence of non-white, Muslim politicians may therefore make Reform appear a viable option for voters who want “change”, but are reluctant to back a party they perceive as overtly racist or anti-Muslim. read the complete article
Moment pig's head mounted on gates of family home as police probe 'appalling' suspected hate crime
This is the moment a pig's head was mounted on the gates of a Muslim family's home. A dad says himself, his wife and two young children have been left shaken by the shocking incident in Stockport earlier this month. Police are now investigating the 'appalling and deliberate act' which they say they are treating as a suspected hate crime. "My kids were shouting 'there's a fox'" he told the Manchester Evening News. "I just thought they were messing about and then I saw it on the floor. Instantly I just 'thought 'oh s***, what on earth has gone on here?' I just told the kids it was a dead pigeon as I didn't want to alarm them. "My wife was really shocked and ran straight back inside. I came back from doing the school run and looked at it properly and it was a real pig's head. I checked the camera footage and you could see them spiking on the gates. It must have fallen off when we opened them in the morning." read the complete article
Britain calls some anti-Israel protests a form of terrorism. Is it state overreach?
Last Wednesday night, on Day 73 of her hunger strike, Muraisi and two other prisoners, Kamran Ahmed and Lewie Chiaramello, announced they were ending their protest against their treatment by the government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer and would start feeding themselves again. Not since Irish Republican Army prisoner Kieran Doherty survived for 73 days before dying on a hunger strike in 1981 had anyone in a U.K. prison demonstrated such endurance. Supporters of Muraisi and the others claimed victory after The Times newspaper reported that Elbit, a subsidiary of Israel’s largest arms producer, lost out on a more than 2-billion-pound ($3.8 billion Cdn) British defence contract. The hunger strike came amid a furious debate in the U.K. over what constitutes reasonable opposition to Israel’s ongoing military attacks in Gaza and its historic treatment of Palestinians. At the heart of the issue is the question of when protests become acts of terrorism. In July, the British government took the unprecedented step of proscribing the protest group Palestine Action as a terrorist organization. U.K.-based human rights groups have accused the Starmer government of misusing the anti-terrorism legislation, while supporters of Israel want to see the crackdown against the protesters go even further. Yasmine Ahmed of Human Rights Watch said labelling protesters as terrorists simply for holding up a sign puts the British government in terrible company. read the complete article
United States
$2,000 reward offered in Walt Whitman High School anti-Muslim graffiti case
Montgomery County police seek public aid to find suspects in an anti-Muslim graffiti incident at Walt Whitman High School, with rewards offered for helpful tips. read the complete article
I teach linguistics at MIT. Here's how a pro-Israel lawsuit uses language to silence critics
In the wake of Hamas's 7 October attack and the launch of Israel's genocide in Gaza, the Louis D Brandeis Center and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) published an open letter urging nearly 200 university presidents to investigate Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) for alleged violations of federal "material support for terrorism" laws. The letter was part of a wider campaign to criminalise peaceful anti-genocide activism and pressure universities to take disciplinary action against campus organisers. StandWithUs and campus organisations such as Hillel and Olami, often described as fronts for pro-Israel lobbying, have likewise weaponised false accusations of "antisemitism" through politically motivated Title VI complaints, civil lawsuits and administrative manoeuvres to silence those who defend Palestinian human rights. I have found myself among those targeted by these same forces of repression, alongside pro-Palestine students and co-workers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where I teach. read the complete article
India
India is profiling Kashmir mosques, raising new surveillance fears
Khan’s worries began earlier this month after the police started distributing a four-page form, literally titled “profiling of mosques”, to their functionaries, triggering fears of increased surveillance and allegations of a discriminatory policy towards the residents in the disputed Muslim-majority region. One page of the form collects information about the mosque itself, seeking information about the “ideological sect” it belongs to, the year it was founded, its sources of funding, monthly expenditure, the number of people it can congregate, and details on ownership of the land on which the structure stands. The remaining three pages collect personal details of the people – imams, muezzins, khatibs and others – associated with the mosque, including their mobile numbers, emails, passport, credit card and bank account details. The more insidious columns in the form ask the respondents to declare if they have relatives abroad, the “outfit” they are associated with, or even the model of their mobile phone and their social media handles. “They are asking for unusually detailed information about religious institutions and those linked to them. The form seeks details about sectarian affiliation, funding sources, land ownership, charitable activities, and much more,” he said. “I do not understand why the police need this much personal information. Keeping such detailed records is not safe for families like mine. In a conflict area like Kashmir, this can have serious consequences.” read the complete article
AR Rahman: Indian composer faces backlash for ‘bias’ in Bollywood remarks
Allah Rakha Rahman, popularly known as AR Rahman, is undoubtedly India’s most famous composer. But last week, when Rahman, a man of few words, shared in a TV interview that he potentially has lost work due to “communal” bias in Bollywood, India’s Hindi film industry, he was subjected to a massive online backlash from Hindu right-wing voices. “People who are not creative have the power now to decide things, and this might have been a communal thing also but not in my face,” Rahman told the BBC Asian Network in the interview aired on Friday. “It comes to me as Chinese whispers that they booked you, but the music company went ahead and hired their five composers. I said, ‘Oh, that’s great, rest for me. I can chill out with my family,’” he said in the 90-minute interview. Right-wing commentators and activists questioned Rahman’s patriotism and talent, accusing him of playing the “victim card”. Vinod Bansal from the far-right organisation Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) demanded an apology from Rahman for “defaming” the country. read the complete article
International
UK arresting Palestine Action supporters is censoring free speech, says US official
Arresting supporters of Palestine Action is “censoring” their free speech and “does more harm than good”, a Trump administration official has said. Sarah Rogers, the US undersecretary for public diplomacy, was asked in an interview with the news platform Semafor whether the British government should allow supporters of the proscribed terror group to protest. “I would have to look at each individual person and each proscribed organisation,” she said. “This Palestine Action group, I’ve seen it written about. I don’t know what it did. I think if you just merely stand up and say: ‘I support Palestine Action,’ then unless you are really coordinating with some violent foreign terrorist, I think that censoring that speech does more harm than good.” MPs voted to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation in July 2025, despite concerns the move could risk criminalising legitimate protest, after the pro-Palestine group broke into RAF Brize Norton and vandalised planes. More than 2,000 people have been arrested for expressing support for Palestine Action since, many for holding signs reading: “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action.” read the complete article