There has never been a more dangerous time to be a British Muslim

As would be expected, the brutal murder of three children in Southport was a terrible wake up shock to all the British citizens. But let me reiterate that, the worst riots that followed this had their origins in rumours spread through social media about the attacker. 
 
I have been, for many years, the Secretary-General of the Muslim World League, and it was my duty to speak for Muslims throughout the world. The UK has been of growing concern; hence why I convened 500 British Muslim leaders in 2023 to the First Conference of European and British Muslim Leaders. And that is where they told me about the raw, tangible worry that they have for their communities as they become increasingly targets of anti-Muslim sentiments. Of concerns which at one point or another could easily be accused of being mere paranoia. 
 
But not anymore. They said that even some of the prominent British Muslim politicians have started getting scared for their lives due to the increased incidents of hate attacks against Muslims. 
 
After all, this month riots have erupted in the UK and attacks have been carried out against mosques, asylum centers, shops, library, hotels and people’s homes. Groups of hooligans burnt tyres, pulled their victims out of their cars, and attacks members of minorities. 
 
This was not the first time far-Right anti-Muslim violence shot up on the streets, this is, in fact, an outcome of decades of latent radicalisation. Yet what emerged as a result of an upward shift that has been occurring over decades is already pushing Western societies into entirely new terrain. Let the Utøya shooting of 2011 serve as our starting point through which, the scale of violence has been gradually upped to include mosques in New Zealand, Quebec city, and London. 
 
But with fake news such as those we have seen in the last few months as a backdrop, one wonders what more is to come. 
 
Social media tech platforms like X have turned into a wholesale distributor of fake news, paying social media agitators such as Andrew Tate, and Tommy Robinson, instrumental in mobilising the riots. 
 
For increased anti-religious hate crimes and hostility, including anti-Muslim bigotry, as well as anti-Semitic incidents among others, it is about time that faith leaders come out in solidarity. Harmful policies – such as X reversing on content moderation, bringing back dangerous individuals’ accounts, cutting down teams focused on disinformation need to be rolled back. 
 
Thus there is still a valid role for new legal legislation, however, it will be years more before we see clear, non-negotiated international rules. Time will keep passing as technology keeps evolving; bad actors will simply move to the next level. 
 
That is why we appear instead to need to concentrate instead on the sinister motives behind this heinous far-Right tendency. Once again, I find myself returning to simple solutions: In the realm of patient – physician interaction there are two sacred goals namely, dialogue and education. with this in mind, I call upon Musk and other social media giants to engage not only Islamic religious leaders but world religious leaders representing all other faith and non-majority faiths – Jewish, Christian, Hindu and others as part an Interfaith Tech and Social Media Summit, that my organisation is determined to convene. 
 
Because yes, regulators and the policymakers have to ensure that the popularity of such material increases the speed and the extent of its removal from the platforms, as the British regulating body Ofcom has pointed out. But they have to be aware of racism and hatred of religion as well, and what these two phenomena entail. But in the first instance, what it must be to counter this is the refusal of hate and the ideology that drives this increase in hostility. Ah, that is an area close to my heart and indeed I have run precisely such a campaign for the past few years. It also captured the ‘Words Matter’ conference in Oslo earlier this year where I was given an opportunity to address the issue as several survivors of the 2011 Utøya massacre spoke about how far-Right terrorist Brevik’s ideology has continued spreading and how social media enabled it. 
 
Of course, this would not be the first time that vile propaganda has raised large scale mass movements with rather catastrophic outcomes. It was while leading a delegation to Auschwitz in 2019 that I was able to discover how brutal was the process of dehumanization before the holocaust. For years, mass media in Germany disseminated false information and anti-Semitic rumours. To the same effect, when I visited Srebrenica last year, I was informed how the traditional media had like the one targeting the Tutsis , dehumanised the Bosnian Muslims before the genocide in Srebrenica. Today however, we have new forms of naked propaganda that can be put up on millions of mobile phone screens in one go. 
 
The riots that happened last week have demonstrated how long it takes for the Number-God’s messages to transform from electrons to Molotov cocktails. Although it is consoling to establish that the anti-racism activists have been able to tame the recent attacks, it needs to be acknowledged that they had to rally after several days of relentless aggression. 
 
A similar concept is held by Elon Musk who rated humanity and vowed to extend the ‘light’ of consciousness. If that is so, I urge him and other managers of other social media tech gurus to sit down with leaders of various religious beliefs in the world and discuss how the social media site in question can disarm those who propagate fake news to pit humanity against itself, and amplify the voices that hold us together as a species. 
 
Only when people interact with each other, it becomes possible to outline a new agenda and the course of action whereby free speech will not be equated with the infringement of religious rights or vice versa and where hate will not be encouraged and sanctified.