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SearchToday in Islamophobia: In the United Kingdom, the cofounder of a pro-Palestinian campaign group has won her bid to bring a legal challenge against the British government’s decision to ban the group under “antiterrorism” laws, meanwhile, in the United States, a new survey from Pew finds Muslim Americans are not just keeping the faith, they’re also leading in classrooms and lecture halls across the country, and in Canada, a Muslim family from Toronto says they no longer feel safe in their neighbourhood after being the target of numerous Islamophobic incidents over a period of four months. Our recommended read of the day is by Taj Ali for Hyphen on the 2024 anti-Muslim Southport riots and how failure to call out and tackle Islamophobia and anti-immigrant hate means that we can expect more violence and instability in society. This and more below:
United Kingdom
The 2024 riots could be repeated — any time, anywhere | Recommended Read
The violence bore chilling similarities to the riots that tore across the UK in the summer of 2024, after the murder of three young girls at a dance class in Southport, Merseyside. False claims that the killer was a recently arrived Muslim immigrant spread rapidly on social media. The next day, the town’s mosque was pelted with bricks and local businesses were targeted. Over the next week, disorder erupted across England and Northern Ireland. In Middlesbrough, a group of men erected a checkpoint, stopping cars and interrogating drivers, demanding to know whether they were white or English. In Tamworth and Rotherham, attempts were made to set fire to hotels housing people seeking asylum. Across nearly 30 towns and cities, a wave of hate-fuelled unrest crested. Politicians and the media paid the usual lip service to community cohesion and tackling misinformation. Far more noise, however, was made about immigration. The UK was in the middle of a “summer of discontent”, said the Mail on Sunday on 4 August, blaming government immigration policies. In September 2024, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper vowed to bring net migration down, clear immigration backlogs and end the use of asylum hotels. The government took a tough-on-crime approach after the riots, quickly jailing people who took part. Few dared utter the words “racism” or “Islamophobia”, though, and the hatred that underpinned the violence hasn’t gone away. In January, seven London mosques were daubed with anti-Muslim grafitti. In the following months, others were attacked in Luton, Aberdeen and Sheffield. In June, worshippers were evacuated from the Belfast Islamic Centre when its windows were smashed and a bomb was thrown inside. In April, Muslim graves in Watford were vandalised. As Hyphen has reported, such events form the foundation of the ongoing fear and unease still felt within the country’s Muslim community. They also show that the events of summer 2024 could be repeated at any time. read the complete article
‘At 80, to be treated like a terrorist is shocking’: arrested on suspicion of supporting Palestine Action
Palestine Action’s co-founder has won a bid to bring a high court challenge over the group’s ban as a terrorist organisation, which has made membership of or support for the direct action group a criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison. About 200 people have been arrested on suspicion of publicly protesting in support for PA since it was banned. read the complete article
UK court rules Palestine Action may challenge ‘antiterrorism’ ban
The cofounder of a pro-Palestinian campaign group has won her bid to bring a legal challenge against the British government’s decision to ban the group under “antiterrorism” laws. London’s High Court on Wednesday ruled that the ban could be considered to be an impingement of freedom of expression and the group should have been consulted before it went into effect. Palestine Action has increasingly targeted Israel-linked companies in the United Kingdom, often spraying red paint, blocking entrances or damaging equipment. It accuses the UK’s government of complicity in what it says are Israeli war crimes in Gaza. After the group broke into a military airbase in June and damaged two planes, the UK’s government proscribed Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act 2000. Proscription makes it a crime to be a member of the group, an offence that carries a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison. Judge Martin Chamberlain granted permission for Huda Ammori, who helped found Palestine Action in 2020, to bring a judicial review, saying proscription amounted to a disproportionate interference with her and others’ right to freedom of expression was “reasonably arguable”. read the complete article
One Year On: Honouring the Victims, Remembering the Riots, and Rebuilding Community
One year ago, the horrific murder of three young girls in Merseyside – Bebe King, Alice Da Silva Aguiar, and Elsie Dot Stancombe – was followed by one of the worst surges of racist and Islamophobic violence seen in recent British history. Fuelled by online disinformation, algorithm-driven social media feeds, and inflammatory rhetoric by some political figures, communities across the country were left reeling. Their grief was weaponised. The names of Bebe, Alice, and Elsie were used in dishonour to justify country-wide riots, leading to targeted attacks on Muslims, immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers. We remember them by committing ourselves to building a society where no group is scapegoated for political gain, and where no tragedy is hijacked to fuel hate. read the complete article
‘The most visible sign of Islam in Britain’: Mosques in UK hold £1.5 billion in assets, new report reveals
Uproar broke out this week as Manchester Islamic Centre advertised for a Sharia administrator via the Department for Work and Pension’s find a job website. Speculation swirled that the role was government-funded. Nigel Farage, leader of Reform UK, said: “Our country and its values are being destroyed.” The centre, also known as Didsbury Mosque, was forced to issue a statement clarifying that it was privately funded through community donations and that right-wing advocates had “maliciously misinformed the public to incite hate and for political gain or out of ignorance”. The advert was removed from the website. For the record, some but not all British mosques have Sharia councils where religious leaders, trained in their faith tradition, arbitrate and mediate on disputes within the community to resolve conflict, and they sit within the British legal system. The debacle outlined the suspicion and hostility surrounding the operations of Muslim places of worship. During the Southport riots in the summer of 2024, mosques were often the first places to be targeted, with some worshippers being forced to barricade themselves inside the buildings to protect themselves. Hostility towards Muslim communities was the impetus behind a report by the Ayaan Institute, Mosques in Britain: A Landmark Study of Faith Infrastructure, published this summer, which hopes to bring transparency to the assets, finances, and representation of mosques across the UK. read the complete article
Overseas X accounts that fuelled 2024 riots still targeting UK Muslims
An anonymous US-based X account whose disinformation about the Southport attacker was cited by MPs as a key contributor to last year’s riots appears to have faced no penalty — and went on to initiate a hate campaign against Rotherham’s first female Muslim mayor almost a year later. It is one of a pair of overseas accounts cited by one disinformation expert as having spread misleading claims in the wake of the Southport stabbings that have since targeted prominent British Muslims, eliciting apparent calls for Islamophobic violence from followers. Hyphen also found that X has failed to remove a post from a third account that appears to incite people to “rise up” and “shoot” Keir Starmer — despite the social media company’s director for global government affairs, Wifredo Fernandez, telling MPs in February that his team would look into it. Experts have said the ongoing targeting of Muslim public figures shows X has not done enough to tackle the spread of Islamophobic disinformation and hate since last year’s riots. Rukhsana Ismail, a charity chief executive, was sent Islamophobic abuse and threats within days of taking office as the mayor of Rotherham in May 2025, much of it from thousands of miles away. “Islamophobia seems to be increasing and its amplification online is getting worse,” said Marc Owen Jones, an associate professor at Northwestern University in Qatar. “It’s only a matter of time before we see another disinformation-driven incident leading to some level of civil unrest, perhaps even worse than what we saw in 2024.” read the complete article
Reform UK selects candidate who was previously exposed for anti-Muslim social media posts
Following the resignation of a Reform UK councillor, a by-election will be held on 21 August for the Bentley ward in Doncaster. In yet another triumph for Reform’s “common sense” vetting procedure, the party has selected Isaiah-John Reasbeck as its candidate – despite the fact he has previously been exposed for anti-Muslim posts on social media. When Reasbeck stood for Reform in the May local elections, HOPE not hate revealed that, on 6 August 2024, he wrote on X (formerly Twitter): “Bradford has one of the biggest Muslim populations in Europe it is also one of the biggest shitholes in Europe draw your own conclusions.” On the same day, Reasbeck responded to someone stating that they’re “not scared of Islam”, by pronouncing that they “should be fucking terrified” of the religion. This is just the latest example of Reform selecting a candidate who has promoted hateful views online. read the complete article
Imam of Southport Mosque reflects one year on from UK race riots
It’s been a year since racist and Islamophobic riots shocked the UK, following false claims that three girls at a dance class were killed by a Muslim migrant. Al Jazeera’s Ruby Zaman spoke to the imam of the Southport Mosque which came under attack to find out how the community is coping. read the complete article
Canada
‘We’ve had to adapt to living in fear’: Toronto family says they have endured months of Islamophobia
A Muslim family from Toronto’s east end says they no longer feel safe in their neighbourhood after being the target of numerous Islamophobic incidents over a period of four months. The initial incident occurred on March 29, the last day of Ramadan, when a male suspect allegedly attempted to break into the family’s residence in the city’s Upper Beach area. Marycarmen Lara-Villaneuva said just after 5:30 a.m. that day a man who lives in the area uttered anti-Muslim slurs and threats as he tried to bust open the door of the home she shares with her husband, Khurram Shahzad, and their two children. Lara-Villaneuva said she believes they were targeted because of an inflatable mosque and a neon Ramadan Kareem light they had on their front lawn. A suspect identified as Christopher Randewich, 53, of Toronto, was arrested a short time later and charged with two counts each of uttering threats/death or bodily harm and mischief under $5,000, Toronto police confirm. They added that the hate crime unit “was advised and assisted divisional investigators.” Less than two weeks later, Lara-Villaneuva said her family was again targeted in an incident that she believes to also be hate-motivated. In this case, she said, a woman who lives nearby allegedly approached her and uttered anti-Muslim rhetoric in regards to the pro-Palestinian sign on her front lawn, accusing her of being a “terrorist.” The family contacted Toronto police, who have confirmed to CP24 that they have a report on file pertaining to that occurrence but have not laid any charges at this point. read the complete article
Islamophobia envoy says Mideast war is bringing back anti-Muslim tropes from 9/11
Ottawa’s special representative on combating Islamophobia says she’s alarmed by a recent revival of decades-old tropes about Muslims supporting terrorist violence. Amira Elghawaby also said Canadians should not be reluctant to speak out for the rights of one group because of a fear of being accused of ignoring the plight of another. “In a country as pluralistic and as diverse as Canada, we should be able to get this right,” Elghawaby told The Canadian Press. She said she’s seen “extremely troubling” instances of people being maligned for peacefully expressing support for Palestinians and urging that Israel be held accountable for its restrictions on aid in Gaza and the high civilian death toll in the enclave. “The same types of narratives that we had seen and we talked about post-9/11 have been resurfacing over the past two years,” she said. “We’re constantly being viewed as engaging in, for example, what some politicians and columnists and media folks will call ‘hate marches’ when involved in any type of protests for Gaza.” She said that kind of commentary is a grim echo of widespread claims in 2001 that “Muslims are quintessential violent radicals, that they must be surveilled and disciplined by the state.” read the complete article
United States
American Muslims more likely than other citizens to have a college degree — study
For years, the story of American Muslims has often been told as a community positioned, if not apart, then adjacent to the American religious story. But data released by the Pew Research Centre this month turns that narrative inside out. In the largest survey of its kind, Pew's 2023–24 Religious Landscape Study (RLS) offers a sweeping portrait of religious life in America — and reveals a surprising symmetry. It finds that Muslim Americans are not just keeping the faith, they're also leading in classrooms and lecture halls across the country. Forty-four percent hold college degrees, with more than a quarter having postgraduate credentials, far ahead of both Christians and the unaffiliated. And yet, their spiritual lives remain vibrant, with young Muslims praying, gathering, and believing as deeply as generations before them. Six in ten American Muslims say religion plays a significant role in their lives, the nationwide study found. Among the American Christians, the number is 55 percent. read the complete article