Earlier this year, in the small Scottish town of Greenock, a 17-year-old boy, drawn to Hitler’s ideology, plotted to burn down the Inverclyde Muslim Centre, lock worshippers inside, and livestream the massacre.
Influenced by far-right extremist Anders Breivik and indoctrinated on TikTok from the age of 13, he infiltrated the mosque by pretending to convert to Islam. When arrested, he was found with gas canisters, an air pistol, and fire-starting tools. He had even drafted a manifesto.
The story is chilling, yet what is equally shocking is how little coverage it received in the UK’s mainstream media. Sky News reported on it, including testimony from mosque leaders, but most other major outlets offered no substantive reporting. A plot to massacre Muslims in their house of worship did not register as a national story.
Now imagine if the perpetrator had been Muslim, and the intended victims were worshippers at a church or synagogue. The headlines would have screamed terrorism. Politicians would have been quick to make statements about extremism.
The disparity in coverage may be perceived as an oversight, but it reflects deeper structural biases.
This selective reporting reinforces the idea that Muslims can only ever be threats, not targets, hence implying that their lives and safety carry less weight. It also emboldens extremists when they see a society unwilling to take Islamophobia seriously.
A pattern of minimisation
The Greenock case is not an isolated incident. In Sheffield, Edmund Fowler was convicted of releasing wild rats outside the Grand Mosque on four separate occasions between May and June. CCTV showed him carrying cages of rodents and releasing them onto the mosque pavement, while phone recordings captured him mocking worshippers.
Tell MAMA, a trusted charity that records anti-Muslim hate incidents across England, described the attacks as “highly dehumanising.” Yet Fowler avoided prison.
In Nottingham, worshippers at a Friday mosque have been enduring repeated abuse for about two years from an elderly white woman who shouts slurs at mosque goers and even blocks cars from leaving.
They reported it to the Islamophobia Response Unit (IRU), an independent charity that provides victims of Islamophobic hate crimes with confidential support and legal guidance. The IRU receives no government funding, yet it represents clients in hundreds of legal cases each year, ensuring that victims are not left to navigate the system on their own.
By July, another such confrontation outside the same Nottingham mosque was caught on camera and reported to the police with video evidence. Officers let the perpetrator go with only a warning. Mosque attendees described this as further evidence of institutional racism, where Islamophobic harassment is not treated as a serious crime.
Even when charges are brought, the watering down of hate crimes can diminish the severity of punishment.
In Scarborough, in North Yorkshire, 18-year-old James Martin was caught outside an Islamic Centre with firelighters in his pocket while shouting abuse during evening prayers. A judge warned the consequences “could have been fatal”. Yet the BBC initially ran the story with the headline, “Teenager jailed for Islamic Centre protest”, only later amending it to acknowledge the firelighters. Online searches still show the original, misleading version.
These cases underscore the normalisation of Islamophobia, not only through individual acts of hatred, but through the systemic minimisation of their seriousness.
Numbers don’t lie
This is not just anecdotal.
Amid this rising tide of attacks, Muslim communities are left feeling vulnerable and unprotected. Iman Atta, director of Tell MAMA reports that assaults surged by 73 per cent in 2024, with 5,837 verified incidents, marking the most dangerous period for Muslims in Britain.
And yet, this surge has not translated into proportionate media coverage, policy focus, or political urgency. Far-right violence against Muslims is too often treated as the work of lone actors rather than an organised, growing threat.
In places like Inverclyde, Muslim communities have been forced to improve their own security, monitor suspicious behaviour, and contend with fears about infiltration.
In addition to all of this being an extra burden, it erodes trust. Worshippers must worry if an unknown person praying beside them could be an infiltrator with sinister intent. That is a heavy psychological toll to place on already marginalised communities.
Britain still lacks a comprehensive national policy to address Islamophobia with the seriousness it demands.
In February 2025, the government established a working group to develop a national definition of anti-Muslim hatred. In July, it appointed the independent charity British Muslim Trust to administer the government’s new Combatting Hate Against Muslims Fund.
But its approach has been fraught. As Middle East Eye reported, the government barred the working group from consulting the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), the country’s largest Muslim umbrella body, while permitting input from individuals and organisations accused of Islamophobia.
Critics say this undermines the credibility of the process, raising doubts about whether Muslim communities themselves are being meaningfully heard.
For many Muslims, these mixed signals point to a deeper problem: Islamophobia is acknowledged in principle but rarely tackled in practice with the urgency it deserves.
Charities like Tell MAMA and the Islamophobia Response Unit (IRU) continue to fill the gap, documenting abuse, offering legal support, and pushing for recognition, but they do so against the grain of government reluctance and media neglect.
Emboldening perpetrators
By downplaying Islamophobic violence, Britain risks normalising the idea that Muslim lives are less valuable. This silence emboldens perpetrators and fails victims. It signals to extremists that they can act with near impunity, and it tells Muslims that their safety is not a national priority.
Muslims may be the target of it, but far-right violence rooted in white supremacist ideology threatens the social fabric of Britain as a whole. It is important to acknowledge that in wanting to kill Muslims, the Greenock attacker was intent on staging a spectacle of terror.
That kind of hate, left unchecked, metastasises.
Britain’s media must report Islamophobic violence with the same urgency as other forms of extremist incidents. Attacks on mosques and communities deserve to be more than a local footnote.
And the government must include Islamophobia in its hate crime and counter-extremism strategies, ensuring that far-right radicalisation is treated as seriously as any other extremist threat. This includes resourcing communities with real financial, legal, and security support.
Finally, the public must demand accountability. Britain cannot continue to turn away from these stories because the victims are Muslim. If the country does not reckon with the normalisation of Islamophobia now, it risks waking up to a far greater tragedy that can no longer be ignored.
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