صراط عشق صراط عشق
Contrary to the mainstream narrative that veiled and bearded people are flooding through UK borders, a significant number of Muslims are leaving their homeland because of rising rates of targeted religious hate crimes. As normalised hate, adults and children born and raised in UK have been left feeling like there’s no choice but to leave.
In recent years, the rates of hate crimes against religious minorities in the UK has rocketed, and for some, it has just become too dangerous to stay. A recent Independent report insisting that there is sign that British Muslims – many who have lived here for generations – are packing up their belongings, parting ways with their loved ones, established careers and the country they were born in to move to somewhere safer.
Sama Khan, who requested for her real name to be protected, is moving to Pakistan with her three children, her husband and her mother in the summer. She was born in the affluent London borough of Kensington and Chelsea, and her parents came to the UK during Partition. Sama told Independent: “I wouldn’t want to leave. This is where I’ve been born and bred. My family’s here … everyone’s here. But I have to think about the future and my kids. If we stay, they’ll face discrimination – and their kids and their kids after them. I don’t want them to feel like second-class citizens. I don’t want them to be miserable.”
Sama’s first experience with Islamophobia came after a lifestyle change in her late-20s when she decided to wear a headscarf day-to-day. In 2018, 720 Muslim women experienced street-based attacks, 480 of them were visible targets like Sama. After putting on the hijab, she said her work colleagues treated her differently. “I was repeatedly intimidated on the road by racist drivers. Now it’s so much worse since Brexit and Boris [Johnson], I know someone whose jaw was broken for being Asian and having a beard.”
Within the British Islamic community, the belief that the EU referendum and the appointment of Boris Johnson as prime minister are to blame for a rise in Islamophobic attacks is widespread. According to TellMama’s latest report, this is not a total misconception. There was a 475 per cent increase in attacks against Muslims following the referendum result, and after Boris Johnson’s comment calling veiled Muslim women “letterboxes” in 2018, anti-Muslim attacks increased by 375 per cent the next week.
Last week, Michael O’Leary, the CEO of Ryan Air openly linked all men of “Muslim persuasion” to bombers, conflating religious extremists, who form less than 1 per cent of the international Muslim community, with non-threatening, normal travellers. It is this sort of discourse that causes anxiety among Muslim fliers and promotes divisive and dangerous hysteria in Britain.
According to Metro, almost a third of UK adults think Islam encourages Muslims to carry out acts of violence against non-Muslims, a survey suggests. It found nearly half (48 per cent) think the religion is ‘incompatible’ with British values. In light of a recent media reports, there has been a sharp increase of verbal and physical abuse against Muslims online and on the streets, including prominent politicians and journalists being asked to “go home”.
AA report disclosed that a large number of the abused are Muslim women, particularly those who wear the hijab. According to a report by Tell MAMA, an organization that measures anti-Muslim attacks, “ … women were more likely to be attacked or abused while travelling on public transport to town and city centers or when shopping.” It means that big challenges lie ahead for ethnic minorities in general and the Muslim community in particular in the coming years.
