Liverpool, United Kingdom – On Friday, the holy day for Muslims, fewer women attend prayers at local mosques across the UK. Those who dare to go out share safety tips: move in groups, avoid crowds and keep car windows closed.
Here in Liverpool, the sun is shining and the school summer holidays are in full swing. But it is one of the English cities where far-right race riots broke out this week. The atmosphere is eerie. There are hardly any children on the streets. The doors of a historic church are closed.
“I’m a pretty strong person, and yet I feel scared, you know? I feel scared,” said Saba Ahmed, a resident who works for a multicultural center that serves local communities.
“It just doesn’t feel right.”
Fears spread across the city as Islamophobic and racist riots erupted following the murder of three young men in Southport, less than an hour's drive from here.
Rumours circulated on social media falsely claiming that the suspect was a Muslim and an asylum seeker. The misinformation, as neither is true, fuelled the worst violence to hit the country in years.
The riots, which occurred in dozens of areas, have been put down thanks to thousands of anti-racist protesters who have outnumbered the demonstrators in a show of solidarity with those affected. Police have imposed harsh sentences on the rioters, which has also deterred others from joining the riots.
But several Liverpudlians and many other Britons are now questioning years of integration.
Observers have blamed politicians and some sections of the media for criticising immigration while demonising Muslims and asylum seekers.
“After the ‘war on terror’, the political conversation and legislation around counterterrorism focused on targeting Muslim communities as a threat to national security,” said Shabna Begum, director of the Runnymede Trust, a racial equality and civil rights think tank.
“And now they have been identified as a cultural threat to British democracy based on old clichés about Muslim civilisation as barbaric.”
Over the years, mainstream politics and some media outlets have absorbed this narrative, paving the way for the “normalisation of Islamophobic rhetoric” in the UK and thus the dehumanisation of Muslims, he said.
As political attention focuses on the surge in undocumented migrants crossing the Channel, many say black and coloured asylum seekers have been lumped into the same category.
Muslims, refugees and non-white people were randomly attacked during the riots.
According to Chris Allen, associate professor of criminology at the University of Leicester, both Labour and the Conservatives have contributed to the vilification of Muslims, paving the way for the general population to vilify minority groups.
“This is partly the legacy of the toxic rhetoric of the Brexit campaign about popular views on immigration that continued right up to the recent general election,” Allen said, adding that politicians have failed to call out Islamophobia when they see it.
The mocking contempt of “journalists” will never stop me from denouncing racism and Islamophobic hatred. image.twitter.com/cQoNKDzJ78
– Deputy Zarah Sultana (@zarahsultana) August 5, 2024
On a recent popular morning TV show, Labour politician Zahra Sultana was asked why it was important to identify Islamophobia and the racialised nature of many attacks in order to tackle racism. When she attempted to respond, she was interrupted by the panel, which many on social media said exemplified an attempt to silence discussions about racism.
“We have to call this racism and we have to call it Islamophobia, because if we don’t, we won’t be able to address what’s happening. Language is really important,” Sultana said on the show.
TellMAMA, which monitors hate crimes against Muslims, said Islamophobic incidents have more than doubled in the past decade.
During Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza, hate crimes against Muslims have increased: according to TellMAMA, such incidents tripled in the first four months of the conflict. Research by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue also shows a marked rise in anti-Muslim content on online platforms during the same period. Similarly, UK groups monitoring hate crimes against Jews have reported an increase during the war.
According to Imam Adam Kelwick, the missing element is dialogue.
Standing outside Liverpool's Abdullah Quilliam Mosque, he has just returned from an unusual meeting over coffee.
He had sat across a table from a far-right protester who was among dozens of people who recently gathered outside the mosque.
At that point, Kelwick confronted the situation by crossing police lines and offering burgers and chips to the angry crowd. He hugged the protesters and promised more dialogue.
“What happens when you get together is you start talking and listening. You start to discover that a lot of the concerns the other person has are yours as well,” Adam said. “All it takes is human interaction.”
He plans to open the doors of the mosque on Saturday to engage in further talks with members of the far right.
But while he tries to speak, others need time to heal.
“We felt like we were so integrated into the community that all the progress of the past few years seemed to have vanished overnight,” said Tawhid Islam, a member and trustee of the Liverpool Region Mosque Network. “Now a seed of doubt has been planted and people are asking themselves: ‘Am I part of this community if I’m not white?’”
