Violence against Muslims is not just in the streets—it's built into our politics

19 February 2025, 14:59 | Updated: 19 February 2025, 15:49

We have achieved a prevailing consensus that Muslims are the problem.

Not austerity which has robbed communities of financial security, not disgraceful levels of child poverty, not increased wealth accumulation by those at the very top - but Muslims who make up 6.5% of the population and who are subject to the same economic hardships impacting others - we are the problem.

We are the problem when we join hundreds of thousands of others using the right to protest to peacefully challenge the Israeli government’s unconscionable assault on Gaza, we are the problem when we turn out to vote in elections, we are the problem when we try to access routes to asylum, we are the problem when we participate in the wider life of our schools.

We are a problem when we don’t participate and live in segregated communities - but we are also the problem when we engage in civic society and become a ‘threat from within’.

Muslim communities in the UK have been subjected to the most horrific and unabashed onslaught of political scapegoating, and in this context it is entirely predictable that we will continue to witness such disgraceful levels of Islamophobia. New figures today show that Islamophobic assaults surged by 73% in 2024.

This is the inevitable outcome of the hyper-normalisation of Islamophobia. Whether Lee Anderson or Suella Braverman claiming “Islamists” are taking control, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson referring to Muslim women as “letterboxes” and “bank robbers”, Muslim men demonised as the only men who commit sexual violence through the confection of ‘grooming gang’ moral panics, or Keir Starmer engaging in the the most heartless PMQs exchange, denying the rights of a Palestinian family seeking asylum in the UK; this normalised Islamophobia in our political conversation is absorbed by, and enables, the fists and fury that is expressed on the streets.

Mainstream politicians and media have encouraged and enabled hatred towards Muslims in openly racist and inflammatory ways, and it is a terrible indictment that our political system is complicit in creating the conditions for the violence which is erupting around us.

This violence is the tip of the iceberg - the structural racism Muslims face in the labour market and housing for example are not as easily tracked - but are no doubt also sites of intensifying racism.

The government must progress the work on defining Islamophobia, engage with Muslim communities, and get its own house rejecting Islamophobic policies and narratives in its own ranks.

I tremble as I write this, both with anger and fear for the future-  because the impacts of this violence will last well beyond the healing of the physical wounds counted in these statistics - this is catastrophic, generational harm being done and there is an urgent need for action.

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Dr Shabna Begum is CEO of the Runnymede Trust, a racial justice think tank.

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