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SearchToday in Islamophobia: In the United States, after a spate of vandalism reports involving graffiti at mosques in Texas and California, Muslim leaders have stepped up efforts to keep their sacred spaces and community members safe, meanwhile in Australia, Victoria police apprehended a 43-year-old man wielding a knife and calling out Islamophobic slurs outside the Hume Islamic Youth Centre on Wurundjeri land in the north Melbourne suburb of Coolaroo last week, and in the United Kingdom, Muslim women have spoken about how wearing the hijab is “empowering” in the face of a new poll that has revealed almost half of Britons believe that women are pressured into putting it on. Our recommended read of the day is by Burhan Wazir for Hyphen on the one year anniversary of the far-right riots and vandalism which broke out in Southport and other British towns and cities last summer and how the British Muslim community is “optimistic but wary” of the continued threat of far-right hate and violence. This and more below:
United Kingdom
‘A place of worship should not look like a fortress’ | Recommended Read
On a hot and humid Monday afternoon at the Southport Mosque and Cultural Centre, imam Ibrahim Hussein, chair of the town’s only Muslim place of worship, sipped a cup of coffee, pointed to two large CCTV monitors in his office and took stock of the past 12 months. “We faced something that we have never faced before,” he said. “We’ve never seen something on this scale at home. So, to us, it was a shock and it was a wake-up call that we can’t just carry on assuming that things are all right. There are a lot of things brewing under the surface and we are not aware of them.” Hussein, 68, was referring to two events in 2024 that shook both Muslims and non-Muslims in this otherwise sleepy Victorian seaside town and sparked the UK’s worst racially motivated rioting in decades. First, on 29 July, Axel Rudakubana, a troubled teenager obsessed with violence and killing, took a taxi to a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport and, armed with a knife, rampaged through a crowded room, murdering three children and wounding eight others, along with two adults. The town was reeling from the horror of the attack when, less than 24 hours later, a vigil to honour the children was hijacked by hundreds of people who flooded local streets in response to rapidly spreading online misinformation about the identity of the attacker. Convinced that the attacker was a Muslim immigrant, they threw bricks at the mosque, tore down a fence, set a police vehicle on fire, attacked police and looted a nearby shop. As rioters chanted “No surrender!” and “English till I die!” more than 50 police officers were injured in the violence. The ferocity of the rioting in Southport catalysed similar violence across nearly 30 towns and cities in England and Northern Ireland over the next week. As men, women and young people attacked libraries and hotel accommodation for asylum seekers, disturbances in cities including Manchester, Sunderland, Leeds and Blackpool underlined how the rapid dispersal of politically motivated disinformation on platforms such as X, Facebook and Telegram can have alarming real-world consequences for minority groups including Muslims and refugees and leave local officials, politicians and the police all but powerless to act. read the complete article
Muslim women say the hijab is empowering as half of Britons believe they are ‘pressured into wearing it’
Muslim women have spoken about how wearing the hijab is “empowering” in the face of a new poll that has revealed almost half of Britons believe that women are pressured into putting it on. The survey found 49 per cent of the British public believe Muslim women wear the hijab due to family or community pressure, while just a quarter (26 per cent) see the decision as a personal choice. The new YouGov survey – which was commissioned by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community and involved polling 2,130 UK adults earlier this month – comes as more than 20,000 Muslim women gather at the country’s biggest Muslim convention, Jalsa Salana UK. Responding to the findings, the 36-year-old obstetrics and gynaecology registrar from Uxbridge, west London, said: “I’m not surprised by the results, but it’s disheartening, because I wish people would listen to how Muslim women actually feel.” The women we spoke to at Jalsa Salana believe that wearing the hijab is a liberating choice. read the complete article
Still avoiding parks and shops: how Muslims feel a year on from the riots
Muslims in one of the English towns worst hit by racist rioting last summer have told of how they still fear for their safety a year on — but praised the support they received from neighbours and said they remain hopeful for the future. Speaking at a pair of focus groups organised by Hyphen in Rotherham at the start of July, a majority also expressed a desire to bridge the divide between different local communities, while others said they have yet to feel the benefit of hundreds of thousands of pounds earmarked by the government for the South Yorkshire town’s recovery. Hundreds of rioters besieged and set fire to a Holiday Inn housing asylum seekers a few miles north of Rotherham town centre on 4 August 2024. It came as racist and anti-Muslim violence spread across the UK in the wake of a triple murder at a children’s dance class in Southport. The unrest, which saw more than 1,000 people arrested and at least 170 jailed, was triggered in part by disinformation spread on social media falsely identifying the attacker as a Muslim asylum seeker. For many of Rotherham’s Muslim residents, their daily routines changed drastically overnight. “I never felt unsafe living in the UK,” said Hero Omer, a Kurdish woman who has lived in Rotherham for seven years. “But after the riots, I went to Morrisons to return a parcel and a man shouted: ‘Go back to your country.’ I didn’t think it was aimed at me, then I realised it was. I haven’t been back since.” Omer, a mother of three, used to take her sons to the park in the evenings. Since the riots, she has stopped. “After what happened to me in Morrisons, I became afraid. After a long day, we used to sometimes stay in the park until 10pm, but now we feel more scared.” read the complete article
Islamophobia isn’t just socially acceptable in the UK now – it’s flourishing. How did this happen?
According to YouGov, more than half of people do not believe Islam to be compatible with British values. I’m often dispirited by these polls, as much by the timbre of the questions as by the responses (how many times do we need to ask one another whether we can afford to avert a climate catastrophe, for instance?) But I can’t remember the last time I was stunned. This latest poll found that 41% of the British public believe that Muslim immigrants have had a negative impact on the UK. Nearly half (49%) think that Muslim women are pressured into wearing the hijab. And almost a third (31%) think that Islam promotes violence. Farhad Ahmad, a spokesperson for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, which commissioned the poll, was surprised that I was so surprised. Things had been really bad for ages, he said, directing me to not dissimilar numbers in 2016 and 2019. If the figures aren’t striking to those who have been paying attention, they remain shocking, particularly when you compare the numbers with those who have a negative view of other religions: 7% have a bad opinion of Christians, 13% think poorly of Jewish people, 14% of Sikhs and 15% of Hindus. This has been a 25-year slide, from the idea that “Muslim extremists have views incompatible with British life” to “all Muslims”; and if people were making that elision already, it was not previously sayable. Sayeeda Warsi said in 2011 that Islamophobia was becoming socially acceptable – at the Conservative party conference she said it had “passed the dinner-table test”. The can’t be right, I remember thinking then – she must just be meeting too many Conservatives. Now we’re at the point where it’s not only socially acceptable, but socially dominant. Never have the effects of Islamophobia been so obvious, or so bleak. To read the domestic news, you would think that no grooming gang had ever contained a non-Muslim. In the rolling news cycle of even our public service broadcasting, Muslim lives are considered less valuable than non-Muslim ones, their loss less tragic. It would be functionally impossible to stand up in parliament and justify arms sales to Israel, small boats hysteria and inhumane treatment of asylum seekers, were it not for the groundwork that Islamophobia has laid. read the complete article
United States
Muslim leaders increase security after vandalism reports at L.A. and Texas mosques
After a spate of vandalism reports involving graffiti at mosques in Texas and California, Muslim leaders there have stepped up efforts to keep their sacred spaces and community members safe. The incidents and subsequent hyper-vigilance add to what many American Muslims say has already been a charged climate amid the fallout in the U.S. from the Israel-Hamas war that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and devastated the Gaza Strip. The war started in October 2023 with a deadly attack by Hamas on Israel. “The past two years have been extremely difficult for American Muslims,” said Edward Ahmed Mitchell, national deputy director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization. A steady stream of images showing the death, destruction and ongoing starvation in Gaza has taken a toll, said Mitchell, as has a rise in anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian bigotry in the United States. The recent vandalism reports have left some worried and frustrated — but not entirely surprised. “Since October 2023, we’ve definitely seen rise in Islamophobia,” said Rawand Abdelghani, who is on the board of directors of Nueces Mosque, one of the affected mosques in Austin, Texas. “Anti-Palestinian, anti-immigrant, all of that rhetoric that’s being said … it has contributed to things like this happening.” read the complete article
Landlord convicted of killing Palestinian American boy dies in custody
An Illinois landlord convicted of fatally stabbing a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy and severely wounding his mother in a hate crime has died in custody, only months after he was sentenced to 53 years in prison. Joseph Czuba was convicted in February of first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, aggravated battery and two counts of hate crime for the October 2023 attack that sent shock waves through the nation. It took place a week after Hamas’s deadly Oct. 7 attack in Israel. The 73-year-old died Thursday in the custody of the Illinois Department of Corrections, the Will County Sheriff’s Office said in an emailed statement Sunday. The cause of Czuba’s death has not been disclosed. read the complete article
Utah Rep. Burgess Owens shares anti-Muslim video from White supremacist account
Utah Republican Congressman Burgess Owens sparked controversy Friday after sharing an anti-Muslim video from an account on X/Twitter that frequently posts hateful White supremacist content. The inflammatory video, which remained on Owens' profile for over 14 hours before being deleted, featured a woman making false and xenophobic claims about Islam and Western society. The video promoted numerous false claims about Muslims and Islam, including the false assertion that the religion "doesn't even see rape as a crime" - a statement contradicted by Islamic law. The speaker also claimed that "The UK and now America are sacrificing their wives and daughters for diversity credit." The video continued with a string of inflammatory accusations against Muslim immigrants, claiming they "hate women, children, white people, America, and Western civilization." Owens's office did not immediately respond to questions from Utah Political Watch. A source close to Owens claimed the repost was likely a mistake and not intentional. This isn't Owens' first brush with extreme content. During his first run for Congress in 2020, he made several appearances on programs related to the QAnon conspiracy theory. read the complete article
Australia
No Moral Panic Sparked Over Attack on Islamic Place of Worship
Victoria police apprehended a 43-year-old man wielding a knife and calling out Islamophobic slurs outside the Hume Islamic Youth Centre on Wurundjeri land in the north Melbourne suburb of Coolaroo just before 6 pm on Monday 21 July 2025. Yet the corresponding response of the state and the media has been subdued despite the criminal incident transpiring at a place of worship. Eyewitnesses say the assailant, a Craigieburn man, had appeared in the carpark initially yelling anti-Muslim slurs. He then left and returned in a white Toyota SUV that police attempted to stop. But the man got out and headed directly towards the Islamic centre, which had 20 congregants inside, and footage shows police repeatedly calling on him to drop the weapon, prior to tasering him. “There is no place for this hateful behaviour anywhere in our community but most particularly around places of worship,” said Victorian premier Jacinta Allan. Yet the Labor leader hasn’t since launched a taskforce into Islamophobia in a similar manner to the antisemitism inquiry she established in response to an arson attack on an East Melbourne synagogue just a fortnight ago. Australia has just borne witness to Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism Jillian Segal releasing her action plan to deal with antisemitism in the community, and this appears at the same time as there has been a distinct avoidance of any mention of recent rising Islamophobia. Indeed, state premiers and police ministers have not been raising the fact that in-person Islamophobic incidents increased by 150 percent over January 2023 to November 2024. No new laws have been suggested or drafted in relation to this. But then again, Islamophobia has neither been weaponised in the public sphere of late, whereas antisemitism has distinctly been swung. read the complete article
For many Muslim women in Australia, Islamophobia feels inevitable
“We're talking about thousands and thousands of incidents ... for many Muslim females who wear the headscarf, they feel that an incident of Islamophobia is what it means to be a Muslim here in Australia." Dr Nora Amath, Executive Director of the Islamophobia Register, observed a “dramatic surge” in Islamophobic incidents, following the October 7th attacks in 2023. She said women and girls were disproportionately targeted, making up about 75 per cent of victims. "It is a gendered issue." Dr Amath said geopolitical events can serve as a catalyst for Islamophobia in Australia, but they're not the only contributing factor. “Political rhetoric is very important to whether we see a rise or a decrease in incidents reported to us.” read the complete article
Anti-Muslim post shadows Nova Peris' election to Olympic sport board
Olympic gold medallist and former Labor senator Nova Peris was elected as a director of Hockey Australia just weeks after sharing a comment on social media from an anonymous account that called Muslims “Satan worshipping cockroaches that need to be eradicated”. The 54-year-old joined the board of the government-funded national federation last month, nearly three decades after she played in the Hockeyroos’ triumph at the 1996 Atlanta Games, becoming the first Indigenous woman to win Olympic gold for Australia. Hailing her as a legend of the sport, Hockey Australia president Ross Sudano said Peris would be a powerful advocate for the women’s game and regional communities, “enriching our increasingly diverse board”. But Peris’ re-posting of the anti-Islam rhetoric has brought into question her fitness to sit on the board of an organisation that receives $9.5 million a year from the Australian Sports Commission and whose diversity policy includes a focus on multicultural communities. The post was made by a since deactivated account on X on April 14 above a cartoon which depicted a drowning Muslim man pleading for help before turning on his rescuers in a boat labelled “England”. The heading below the image read: “The path of Islam is always the same”. Peris distanced herself from the comment when contacted by this masthead. “I absolutely do not share the views expressed in that post, more importantly that account no longer exists and hasn’t done so in many months,” she said in a text message. She did not answer why she had shared the post, a screenshot of which has been published on the social media platform and in an article by the National Indigenous Times. read the complete article
Netherlands
Muslims: Dutch 'Others’- Episode 3: Negative portrayal of imams
"Especially imams are portrayed by the media and by some politicians as spreading ideas that threaten society, or as promoting harmful ideologies, or even inciting violence" Azzedine Karrat is an imam at a major Islamic centre in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. He shares his experience of Islamophobia in the country, emphasising differential treatment of Muslims and Mosques by the government, media, and tax authority. read the complete article