To think these riots are about anti-muslim feeling more than immigration....

[SaltAndVinegar2]

...and to wonder what the rioters actually think the solution is?

I mean there are plenty of Christian immigrants and no-one is attacking churches. Inner city churches are often mostly made up of ethnic minority and immigrant people

Just watched Ed Balls interview with Zarah Sultana.
ZS: "it's important to call out these riots for being islamophobic because mosques and muslims are being targetted"
EB: "do you agree we need to control immigration"
followed by constant interruption and not allowing her to actually say anything. He came across terribly. There have been 8000 complaints about this interview!

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/ed-balls-gmb-zarah-sultana-riots-b2591311.html

These rioters want to get rid of muslims whether British or immigrant - that is the unpalatable truth. It's not about immigrants in general at all, and only partly about the ones in the hotels. It's scarily reminiscent of what I've read about the early days of the 1930s in germany before Hitler came to power.

Also, islamaphobia didn't start in October 2023.

The whole of secondary school I was called a "paki terrorist" and told to go back to "Muslim land". (I was born here and have only ever held British citizenship).

But I suppose that was my fault too because of 9/11.

I love this country. This is my country too. I have as much right as you do to walk the streets and live my life without harassment. This is the only place I have ever called home. I have friends of various faiths and none and of all races. Who are you to make me feel unwelcome or suggest that I deserve to be discriminated against on the basis of my religion?

I can't believe I am having to justify my existence within my own homeland.

Why don't you have a piece of bread and calm down a bit? You lost any credibility when you compared hijabs to earrings. Yeah cause they're exactly the same...🙄

You do realise most Muslim countries wouldn't allow for us to wear revealing clothes, be gay or be any other religion except Islam? Just to name a few examples. A lot of them also treat women and gay people horrifically. I suppose these bits don't fit with your narrative though so we'll just pretend it's not true.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_Muslims Reminder for some people on this thread... According to the logic of certain posters here, we should hold the above people accountable for 9/11, 7/7, October 7th etc. If any of the people on this list are facing islamaphobia then surely it's their own fault. 🙄

I think people forget that there are approx 1 billion Muslims in the world - we were never going to be one homogenous group.

Nearly 2bn Muslims actually. Around 25% of the world's population. I agree with your points.

You can say the same of other cultures - the current Hindu government has been called the Hindu Taliban, for example. The way women are treated in India would be seen as very sexist to most westerners, homosexuality has only just been legalised in India and is still seen as completely unacceptable and shameful within many communities, most Indian women still dress conservatively. Or we could look at orthodox Jewish communities where women also dress conservatively. Many of them shave off their hair and wear a wig or head covering because it's seen as imodest reveal your hair.
But for some reason, I never see this mentioned on Mumsnet. It's always about sticking the boot in to Muslims.
Other religious practices and cultures will always seem strange to us. It's simply dangerous to tar everyone with the same brush and view all Muslims (nearly 2 billion people, 1/4 of the world's population) as the same.

Difficult to do that given the size and scale of the demos and the massive amount of support on social media and during the election. Based on this, I think a significant proportion of Muslims would have some degree of support for Hamas.

Don't really understand your comment about Muslims not turning up for work? What is that supposed to imply? That the country is hugely dependent on the Muslim workforce? Please show me that evidence for that.

One thing about Islam (perhaps different to other religions) is the almost aggressive nature that their is a demand that their religious practises are guarded. In my opinion if you make the conscious decision to move to another country with a very different culture it is incumbent on you to engage with and integrate with this culture respecting the local practice and beliefs of this culture. When in Rome do what the Romans do.

There has to be an element of compromise when this happens and I think to a large part other religions have done this successfully in the UK but Muslims are conscious that they shouldn't compromise on their religious identity. This leads to the understanding that wearing of a hijab should never be questioned even in a school l environment where uniform is important and sectarianism limited. There are demands locally that Eid should be officially recognised as a bank holiday effectively when looking at staffing levels at some institutions. The right to pray five times a day is increasingly being advocated for with a number of employers etc.

A bit of an aside but Muslims do have a problem with our flag (At George's cross) as it was a symbol taken by crusaders in the 13th century when European countries tried to wrest Jerusalem from Muslim control..

We therefore now attribute the cross of St George to maybe a more modern anti Muslim feeling and it is important all people in England and the UK own and feel.encompassed by our national flag. We are not going to change national symbolism but we can look to take the flag back from the far right. To do so though we need a more universal acceptance of our flag as the accepted symbolism of state.

It’s this. When people move to other countries they have to adopt the culture of that country. If I move to Egypt longterm then I must behave like the Egyptians. If I can’t do that then I need to find another location that aligns more with my own culture and beliefs.

I see these sweeping statements all the time. Are these aggressive demands actually happening or have you just got this impression from newspapers and social media? I live in a Muslim community (I'm white British) and have not seen or heard of any such demands. All children at our local schools are allowed 2 days off a year for religious festivals, whether they are Hindu, Jewish, Muslim or whatever. Obviously the school holidays already align with Christian holidays. I've not heard of anyone demanding that Eid becomes a bank holiday. I'm not saying that no Muslim has ever suggested this (I can believe that some Muslims might want it) but your post is like so many others, like a Daily Mail headline - "Muslims aggressively demand Eid as a bank holiday!" so people read that and get pissed off and think "Who do these Muslims think they are? Why are they so aggressive? This is a Christian country! Why don't they piss off if they don't like it here?" etc etc when in reality it's not happening on a large scale (if at all).
Statements like yours just breed bad feeling against Muslims.
There are six Muslims in my team at work and dozens in the wider organisation. None are aggressively asking for time to pray. They're not asking to pray at all! They all work normal hours and don't have prayer breaks. They work through Eid. If they did want time to pray I'm sure our organisation would allow it because they're very inclusive and support flexible working. However, no one has ever asked. Again, someone might read your post and start feeling pissed off that Muslims are demanding prayer breaks at work. Start to feel sympathy towards the rioters because "we've had enough of Muslims and their demands".
Muslims must feel emotionally exhausted reading these constant attacks.

https://www.islamicspain.tv/history-of-islamic-spain/article-end-of-muslim-rule/

I was on the costa del sol recently and looking at local history it is evident that the clash of cultures between Islam and Christianity have shaped the nation.

No one would describe Spain being built on Islamaphobia but historically it shows the complexities of maintaining two cultures in parallel especially when governance is involved.

It also suggests some Muslims do have a cultural ambivalence against modern Europe as there has been a long history of conflict between Christian and Muslims cultures.

@SallyWD

There are demands amongst some but not all but what we have to accept this that the ability to practise a religion fully is not a human right. We have freedom of religion but not be freedom to shape culture to align to our views without democratic mandate.

Possibly aggressive was a strong word and assertive may have been better. I don't think people's views on society should be viewed as attacks and I am sorry if you feel that way. Again no condones hate speech or rioting.

The fact does remain we have to talk about how different religions and cultures
cohabit successfully and how we should view the host dominant culture European countries. I mentioned France banning religious paraphernalia is French schools and I think they are perfectly justified in this as it is entirely lawful in their constitution. This is a good example of where individual religious rights are subservient to national law and culture. I think this should be respected.

It is really unfortunate that mindless rioters prevent the debate by allowing anyone who has opinion on how cultures can thrive successfully to be labelled as far right.

SallyWD

"Muslims must feel emotionally exhausted reading these constant attacks."

They really must be.

@mids2019 I think if you digged a little deeper you might be surprised to find that the average Muslim is more concerned about everyday things like paying rent/mortgage, managing finances, sorting out childcare, making meal plans etc etc rather than being pre-occupied with the history of Europe between Islam and Christianity.
So I think a large part of what you write is just in your head and not the reality for us British Muslims.

Yes, of course we should have an open discussion about all these issues but to say that Muslims differ from other faiths because they aggressively make demands isn't really an objective way to start the debate, is it? It's exactly the rhetoric that is stirring up so much trouble and hate. The type of thing you hear from Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson that gets everyone frothing at the mouth.
France has chosen to ban faith schools and religious dress in schools etc but we in the UK haven't done that. I personally am opposed to that and wouldn't want to strip Muslims, Jews and Sikhs of their religious clothing. However, it's certainly worth having a debate. If it came in to practice it would affect and upset many other faiths as well. Jewish boys would no longer be able to wear to wear a kippah, Sikh boys will not be allowed to wear patkas or turbans. It's not a step to be taken lightly and will cause distress for many.

'Muslims' have a problem with your flag do they? All 2billion of them? Seriously, listen to yourself.

Quite.

We therefore now attribute the cross of St George to maybe a more modern anti Muslim feeling and it is important all people in England and the UK own and feel.encompassed by our national flag

Is also a load of old toss. Why would the people of the UK have to "own" and feel "encompassed" by the English flag? What does that even mean?

OK if we look at the leaders of Italy and the Netherlands we see where this is going politically if there is no debate. You can see by people's voting intentions there are concerns.

I agree completely on a day to day level we all have our own life concerns and in reality these take up a lot out time. In a way you would think common humanity may be a great bonding feature.

However allusions to history may be valid when considering all religions are archaic and their spread often was due to hostile conflict or oppression. I would ask any Muslim do they not feel at some level a degree of resentment of the success (economic and geopotically of the rise of colonial Europe in the middle 600 years of the last millenium?

One of the features of modern life has been the gradual decline of religion due to the realisation of has misogyny and authoritarianism at its core. This goes for both Christianity and Islam. In our enlightened times there has been increasing non belief in a supernatural being amongst some yet a respect to the religion that is ingrained in the modern powers of the U.S. And Europe. Some may think it is a step back to being in archaic mediaeval religions with a puritan bent that suppresses social progressiom.

Many people in the West give their children freedom of choice over religion and many children decide to become atheist due to not belief people rise from the dead or have ang angels speak to them in caves. It is this freedom of non religion or being agnostic that seems to be missing from Islam.

For the wholesale social following of any religion it is most easily done in a state where religion is prioritised (as in Islamic states) with Islamic law followed and everyone follows certain pracrice.

I believe in the UK British Muslims can feel a real pull on identity and for some yes, questions about the British culture and global standing. Issues could range from a long standing

support of Israel to how to identify with a Christian King etc.

Just ignore that poster, who is a walking, talking supremacist more suited to stormfront or whatever websites racists are using today.
Their posts are knowingly designed to be deliberately hurtful/provocative and spread hate with a large dose of disinformation.

If any of the postmodern please let them be taken down. No offence was meant so I hope none was taken.

I don't believe I mentioned race at all, relgjon, yes, race no.

You are right. Best ignored.

I so agree with this British soldier's take on the riots.

https://x.com/DoubleDownNews/status/1821861011151847449

Question to the Muslim posters with the 'nothing to do with me' attitude to Muslim terror. What do you think about all the white people, like me, who take to the streets in anti racist marches, following terror attacks by white racist? Do you think we're just completely wasting our time, or do you think ordinary white people should speak out/march?
Reading this thread, I'm wondering if I'm just completely wasting my time because if Muslims thought taking to the streets in 'anti Muslim terror' marches, they would do it.
Does street protest (NOT riots) actually achieve anything?