LONDON: Rioting in the UK has left 92 percent of Muslims feeling “much less safe,” a new poll has found.
Commissioned by Muslim Census and conducted on Aug. 5-6, the poll found that one in six people suffered racist attacks since the beginning of the riots, The Independent reported.
The week-long rioting by far-right groups, mainly in England, began on July 30 and ended with a massive campaign of arrests.
The poll came as an adviser to King Charles on race relations warned that Britain is facing a brain drain of middle-class Muslims amid rising Islamophobia.
Harris Bokhari said growing numbers of Muslims nationwide feel that Britain is no longer a welcoming place for people from different cultures.
Despite “loving this country beyond anything,” he told The Times that he has discussed emigrating with his family.
“The way I view it now is that we have a brain drain,” he said. “So, from the Muslim community we have got really talented people who have left the country and more people (are thinking about) leaving the country.”
The poll, which surveyed 1,519 people from different backgrounds, found that Muslims, in reporting racist incidents since the rioting, most frequently faced verbal attacks (28 percent).
It was followed by 16 percent reporting online abuse. A further 4 percent said they had suffered physical attacks.
The co-founder of Muslim Census, Sadiq Dorasat, said: “We have heard stories about hijabis that don’t feel safe to leave their homes or go to work. We’ve seen a witch hunt directed to people of the Muslim faith mentioning Allah and His Messenger and people are concerned for their safety.”
The violence that broke out in late July saw mosques, Muslim-owned business and asylum hotels targeted in cities across the UK.
Dorasat said: “This has been a growing and rising problem. We see it day to day and some people might not even be surprised at the riots that are taking place.
“Since the start of the year, Muslims have been experiencing these Islamophobic incidents and it has only been accelerated in the last week. Nobody should be surprised.”
Following the campaign of mass arrests to bring an end to the rioting, Prime Minister Keir Starmer pledged to combat hate and launch new protective measures for mosques nationwide. But Dorasat called on him to “properly call out and punish the perpetrators.”
Tell Mama, a British charity that monitors anti-Muslim hate incidents, released new data that also highlight the spike in Islamophobia during and after the rioting.
The charity said it had received 500 reports of online and offline hate during the period, including death threats toward Muslim women.
Iman Atta, Tell Mama’s director, told The Times that the growth of Islamophobia means that emigration is no longer a “fringe thought” for many British Muslims.
“This means that some of our best doctors, nurses, accountants and healthcare workers have left and will continue to leave as they feel increasingly unsafe,” she said.
One of the charity’s co-founders, Fiyaz Mughal, told The Times that he is leaving Britain for Europe.
He said: “I’ve always stood by Britain and stood by the values; in fact I’ve challenged Islamist extremism and stood for British Muslim communities, but after this recent round I just thought when the hell are we going to get over this racism? And my mindset is I’ve had enough — I want to go to Europe.”
Bokhari, who has worked with every prime minister since Tony Blair on race relations, described his alarm at the number of young people involved in the nationwide riots. At least 50 people aged under 18 have been charged in connection with the violence.
He said: “There are some viral videos now … of parents taking along young kids shouting, ‘P***, go home.’
“But I’m not going to blame a young person for that. Young people are not born to be racist or homophobic or prejudiced.”
Bokhari called for the creation of a national service program to allow young people from different backgrounds to interact, in a bid to “break down barriers.”
He said: “If we can create a generation of young people that can fundamentally disagree with each other, but get them to work together and not hate each other, not victimise each other, not despise each other, do something positive together, then that’s what I think interfaith has to move towards.”
