Recent violence is result of structural racism and Islamophobia: the government must take action

6 August 2024, 13:58 | Updated: 7 August 2024, 14:40

“I just told my mum not to go into the city centre because I was afraid she might get attacked”, said a Muslim colleague at work.

Returning from a weekend of seeing orchestrated racist violence on the streets, I was having similar conversations with colleagues and friends who are afraid of being attacked simply because they are Muslim or not white.

Groups of Muslim women online asking for self-defence classes because the threat of physical violence feels so close. Sons telling their fathers not to drive a mini-cab during the evening or weekend.

Maslaha as a charity has worked for over a decade in tackling racism and inequalities faced by Muslim and other marginalised communities, and this violence was always a looming presence.

The tragic killing of three girls in Southport is not the starting point but is the excuse racism will look for.

Over the past decade we have seen a mixture of discriminatory legislation and policy-making like Prevent, rhetoric from politicians (remember Boris Johnson called Muslim women letter-boxes and more recently Stop the Boats) and crude media coverage, that dehumanises Muslim communities.

The response to this has to be immediate and long-term and involve the communities who are feeling fearful of living in this country.

The first response has to be for this Government to acknowledge that decades of structural racism and Islamophobia is driving this violence.

There then needs to be an anti-racism assessment carried out of Government legislation in the way a risk assessment would be carried out. This has to be community-led and not by those close to ministers.

As young people return to school in September, teachers need to create spaces to have conversations about this violence. It has to be carried out through the lens of anti-racist training.

Funding should also be made available for organisations and collectives who are rooted in their community to hold spaces for Muslim and racialised people to express their emotions and hopes for a different society. Not one based on British Values, but one based on love and compassion. A sense of community where you do not have to prove your humanity.

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Raheel Mohammed is the founder and director of Maslaha, a charity that tackles inequalities and discriminations faced by Muslim communities.

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