Muslims feel ‘terrorised’ by UK riots as mosques brace for violence

For Liverpool’s biggest mosque, it’s been a week of firsts.

Most entrances have been blocked, men in high-vi’s jackets have been taking turns to patrol and a handful of worshippers have been sleeping inside at night, all necessary precautions, said officials at the Al-Rahma Mosque, during the UK’s worst riots in years.

The increased vigilance comes as some Muslims and ethnic minorities in Liverpool say they feel unsafe amid widespread violent, racist protests targeting mosques, immigration centres and hotels that have not spared the famously left-leaning city in the north of England.

Both mosque officials and other Muslims in Liverpool described feeling shocked, after two mosques further north in England were targeted by violent mobs and hundreds of anti-immigration protesters and counter-protesters clashed in central Liverpool. Shops were looted and some police were injured.

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A second mosque in Liverpool, the Abdullah Quilliam, which describes itself as Britain’s first, has temporarily closed due to the violence, which was fuelled by a false narrative spread online that the killer of three girls in nearby Southport last week was an Islamist migrant.

“I was born here, I was raised here. So, seeing this, it just doesn’t feel like home,” said Abdulwase Sufian, a 20-year-old student who helps at the Al-Rahma, referring to himself as a “Scouser,” the colloquial term for someone from Liverpool.

“Seeing what’s happened, it’s gotten me scared, not just for myself, but for the future,” he said.

Sufian added that the separate female entrance for the mosque, which serves a wide range of Muslims from ethnic Yemeni to Pakistani, had been closed to discourage women from visiting in the evenings, out of safety concerns.

He himself hasn’t stepped outside his immediate neighbourhood out of fears for his safety, Sufian said, a sentiment echoed by others in the community.

Feeling terrified

Saba Ahmed, a community worker and another Liverpudlian Muslim, said she had felt “terrified” in recent days, and her 15-year-old son was preferring to spend his summer holidays indoors on his PlayStation.

Still, many of Ahmed’s white English friends had been supportive, she said, with some neighbours offering to do the grocery shopping for her so she could remain safe at home.

“That’s our people in Liverpool, that’s our fellow neighbours here,” she said.

Others have been less fortunate.

Farmanullah Nasiri, a taxi driver, described being assaulted after picking up two passengers from Aigburth Road, Liverpool, in the early hours of Tuesday.

One of them, a woman, punched him on the face and broke his dashcam as she left his silver Ford Focus, after starting an argument over the fare and after abusing him once she learnt he was an ethnic Afghan, Nasiri said.

Nasiri, 28, said he did not file a police complaint.

A video shot at 0120 GMT on his iPhone showed a broken dashcam and blood above his right eye.

“This is kind of a racism … Been here for more than 10 years in Liverpool. Everybody’s friendly. There’s no issue like this before. This is the first time,” Nasiri said.

Tell MAMA, a group which monitors anti-Muslim incidents, has received over 500 calls and online reports of anti-Muslim behaviour from across the UK in the past week, a five-fold increase from the week before, its director Iman Atta said, describing Muslim communities as “terrorised.”

Anti-Muslim hate has been growing in the UK even before the start of the riots, and particularly after the start of the conflict in Gaza last year, the group said.

Over one in four in a survey of 550 British Muslims last month said they had faced an anti-Muslim hate incident in the last year, Tell MAMA said.

The Muslim population in England and Wales stood at 3.9 million people, or 6.5 per cent of the total, as of 2021. (Reuters)