A group of Muslims have described to British reporters how they hid in a mosque in the English city of Sunderland while protestors gathered outside. Zaf Iqbal is the co-chair of the Sunderland Interfaith Forum and said riots in the town had left Muslims so frightened that they did not want to leave their homes. A mob also reportedly attacked the Masjid E Anwaar E Madinah mosque, with people locked inside fearing for their safety.
Several mosques across Britain came under attack when riots broke out following the murder of three children at a dance class in the northwest England town of Southport. The girls were attending a Taylor Swift dance class when the son of Rwandan immigrants crashed into the room and began stabbing people indiscriminately. Three girls, identified as six-year-old Bebe King, seven-year-old Elsie Dot Stancombe, and nine-year-old Alice Dasilva Aguiar, died in the attack, and almost a dozen others were seriously injured.
The incident provoked a ferocious anti-immigration backlash, with hundreds demonstrating against the transformation of their country via vast levels of migration over decades. Locals were protesting partly against the country’s sizeable Muslim population, which is implicated in terrorist attacks that have killed hundreds, rape gangs, and serious drug offenses. Mosques, therefore, were targeted by rioters, as well as police stations, because police are considered to have taken the side of immigrants and covered up many of their crimes.
Police and politicians have promised extra protection for mosques, in many cases adding further fuel to the fire of public anger. Native Britons say they do not receive the same protection when they come under attack from Muslims as multicultural Britain slides further into sectarianism and division.
In Woking, Surrey, for instance, a large number of police were deployed to what is the nation’s oldest mosque amid rumors that anti-immigration activists planned to target it. Mosque officials said they had cut their opening hours in other parts of Britain. In Peterborough, Cambridgeshire – a town with a Muslim population of 30,000 – Abdul Choudhuri of the Joint Mosque Council asked the Muslim community to “remain vigilant” but not to take the law into their own hands.
“The situation and targeting is deeply concerning. Especially as it did not relate to the Muslim community,” Choudhuri said, referring to the Southport murders that were not committed by a Muslim, but nevertheless revived long-held grievances between Muslims and non-Muslims in the United Kingdom.
In Rotherham, Yorkshire, a town synonymous with Muslim crime against non-Muslims, particularly young girls, a hotel housing 240 illegal immigrants, mostly from Muslim nations, was set alight by protestors shouting, “Send them back.”
Rotherham generated international headlines in 2014 when a government investigation found at least 1,400 girls had been raped and forced into prostitution by Muslim gangs over the preceding decade. The nation was shocked by the horrific details of extreme violence inflicted upon young girls, as well as the police response. The investigation’s report revealed that police had done very little to prevent the rapes and, in some cases, even arrested the victims and their families.
