After years of anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim protests and riots, as well as a general surge in racist violence, it\u2019s no wonder that many British Muslims are feeling unsafe. Aliya, 30, tells Dazed that the current climate makes her feel scared when she goes out in her hijab. \u201cI don\u2019t always wear a hijab day-to-day, but I do when I\u2019m going to the mosque, and now I feel more unsafe being recognised as visibly Muslim. I also worry about my loved ones going to the mosque, because you never know when you\u2019ll run into the wrong people,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The British Muslim Trust (BMT) says that 7 in 10 Muslim women<\/a> felt more worried about their personal safety following the \u2018Unite the Kingdom\u2019 rallies organised by far-right activist Tommy Robinson. Speaking on the race riots in Belfast, Aliya adds that \u201cseeing videos of emboldened racists going door-to-door attacking anybody non-white reminded me of the stories my parents would tell me about the National Front doing the same in the 1970s. I can\u2019t believe this is where we are 50 years later.\u201d<\/p>\n According to new figures published by the BMT, which monitors anti-Muslim hate crimes in partnership with the government, a mosque is attacked in Britain every five days. Human rights group Amnesty International, meanwhile, say that Islamophobic attacks in the UK have now reached emergency levels<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Recent incidents include the evacuation of hundreds of Muslim students after a bomb threat at a school in Birmingham; a 14-year-old boy being charged with terrorism offences after planning to target two mosques in south London; the arrest of 12 people following a foiled terror plot against a Muslim festival in Suffolk, and a violent assault outside a mosque in Leyton. In June, a man armed with a machete went on a stabbing spree in Edinburgh that injured five people. At the time of his arrest, he was captured on video shouting that he was \u201cprotecting this country from f*****g Muslim b*****ds\u201d. Over the last year, mosques and homes have been targeted in firebombings across the country including in Blackburn, Bolton and Sussex.<\/p>\n Muslim writers, activists and organisers have warned for years<\/a> about the normalisation of racialised, Islamophobic rhetoric in political and media discourse, and how the hostile climate this creates risks spilling out into real-world violence. An extensive report from the Centre for Media Monitoring<\/a> (CFMM) found that The Spectator, Britain\u2019s oldest political magazine, had \u201ca sustained and systemic pattern of biased coverage of Muslims and Islam\u201d, while an earlier report found that controversial news channel GB News repeatedly depicted<\/a> \u201cMuslims and Islamic beliefs as part of a conspiracy to undermine the British way of life\u201d. Far-right political parties like Reform and Restore have also come under scrutiny for institutional Islamophobia, with multiple Reform candidates<\/a> standing in British local elections having a history of sharing Islamophobic and racist content online.\u00a0<\/p>\n But the issue of anti-Muslim hostility goes beyond the far-right, and traditional media outlets across the spectrum of political opinion have long been accused of Islamophobic coverage. Major news publications, including the Guardian and the BBC, have been criticised for biased coverage of the genocide in Gaza that minimises the mass killing of mainly Muslim civilians in Palestine, while social media, along with the more recent introduction of generative AI, has helped to spread anti-Muslim conspiracy theories and racist tropes faster than ever. When Islamophobic rhetoric is promoted by those with vast wealth, power and influence, such as billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk sharing a Tommy Robinson speech<\/a> which called for the mass deportation of Muslims due to their \u201chostile ideology\u201d, it\u2019s ordinary British Muslims who face the consequences.<\/p>\n