#islamphobia

First of all thank you.

Second of all, I care because the knots these tie themselves into will undoubtedly affect people like me. I care because the things they don’t like to see include people like me.

And when these people don’t like something they will do whatever it takes to get rid of it.

I wish I didn’t have to care.

God knows I would rather do literally anything else than keep an eye out for what Nigel Farage is yabbering on about now. I could start a new hobby, write a book, at the very least have considerably less mental breakdowns.

But alas we live in a society and these are the people who run it. People who hate every aspect of my identity and don’t think I deserve to live in the country I was born and raised in.

I have to be aware of the things they do and say because one way or another it will affect me, my family, my friends and communities either directly or indirectly.

When a Reform UK councillor is elected after saying Pakistanis should be lined up and shot in the street. When people like Lucy Connolly are celebrated after telling people to burn down migrant hotels.

When teenagers are trying to kill Muslim people on the streets believing they need to be eradicated. When black women are being found dead in bodies of water and there are no further investigations.

None of that shit happens in a vacuum. It is the consequences of what these people in power do and say. It makes my world and those of others just that more unsafe so yeah I care, I care a lot and whether you do or not is entirely up to you.

Also you know if I didn’t care then how would I be able to live my life out of spite to piss them off?

And well if giving white British people the benefit of the doubt means that I don’t automatically assume that every single one of them is a hateful bigot while calling out those who are…than yeah I suppose I do?

All in all, it went well, we were good friends, it was a good residential. Still, just before it ended, she turned to me and said she had never been so scared because she was from a part of London where everyone she knew was either Muslim or at least POC. She was walking into a room full of white people, and then boom, I appeared like a golden retriever and adopted her immediately. She felt safe and accepted so quickly, which had never happened to her in a white space, cause this was 2017 in London. Where the post-Brexit Islamophobia was and still is on another level, but like I didn’t know I could do that. I didn’t know that being nice and going up and saying hi and being annoying and chatty could be reassuring in that way because up until that point I went to a white Irish Catholic school. The POC population in my town is like maybe 1%, but I just never really thought about it. I was going to London, London is much more diverse than my hometown, so of course I would say hi.

Like, I get this sounds unbelievable to people, but this was genuinely my first time meeting a Muslim person. We laughed about the fact that she met her first ginger on this trip, and I could tell her 15 gingers without even thinking, but this was my first time on a bus with so many POC. Life is just like that sometimes. It was no big deal to me, but when she thanked me, I realized in real time how awful the Islamophobia really was in London because this tiny brown girl with a hijab just thanked me for saying hi. Like I had heard about using your white privilege to help or whatever before, but I never thought about how exactly it could be used to help people feel safe like that. Simply because I — a blonde, chatty girl — immediately went up to a girl in a hijab and welcomed her, and everyone else did, it made her feel so much better. Before the trip, she said she was so scared about wearing her Hijab in case people were awful to her, and because of me, she knew they wouldn’t be. Like I’m sure they would have anyway, or at least I hope they would have, but genuinely I didn’t know that saying hi to her could make her feel safer.

This happened last year and the news is only reporting on it now. It took place in August 2025 in Bedminster, South Bristol, England outside Mohammed’s barber shop.

Thankfully Mohammed is okay, his attacker tried to swing at him from behind and he managed to get the axe away from her though he has a scar from the incident.

This not an isolated case though is it?

We’re getting more and more vile incidents of young adults and teenagers attacking racial and religious minorities with this mentality that they need to eradicate all people like them.

It’s a response to the rampant far right racism, anti Muslim and anti Jewish sentiments our politicians are spewing and spreading across the country.

Keir Starmer quoting Enoch Powell. The demonisation of immigrants. They’re South Port riots (of which she was inspired by.) Reform UK supporters doing the Nazi salute at a Green Party Rally.

Reform UK councillors talking about melting Nigerians to fill in pot holes, celebrating the rape of Punjabi and Sikh women, saying all Pakistani’s should be shot in the street etc.

I mean Tommy ten names far right Unite the Kingdom March was yesterday (16th May) and aside from a travel ban and condemning it our government hasn’t given a rats arse about it.

While they are trying to actively ban pro Palestine marches. They were trying to overturn the police’s decision to ban racist Maccabi Tel Aviv fans knowing they’d be riots in Birmingham if they came here.

They didn’t care than and they don’t care now. Had this woman’s target not been a Muslim man it would’ve been everywhere but the media can’t use this attack to spin their narrative so it was nothing but silence for a year.

I mean the woman tried to kill a man named Mohammed but all the headlines are solely focusing on her being a Neo Nazi.

They don’t care about us and they’ve conditioned this country to see us as threats. They’re not gonna do jackshit about this, there won’t be any security money or anything for the communities affected because the propaganda is working as intended.

None of them had noticed us btw.

One em is a white boy who yells out “Allahu Akbar” and we’re all like…okay then but you know we carry on. Make a little joke about it like yeah man I agree.

Then one of his friends, a black girl notices us lot and immediately follows him on her bike yelling “you fucking idiot there’s Muslims walking behind you!”

So we’re even more shocked like damn she got him. We carry on get to the end of where we walking and find both of em there and she’s giving him the stink eye all “well go on say it again.”

And this kid with the most reddest face I’ve seen in my life just looks at us all and says I’m so sorry. Which props to him you know it was one of those situations where you just know it wasn’t meant maliciously, kid didn’t even notice we were there but still took accountability and apologised.

Something people a lot older than him struggle to do.