'My Son Messaged Me, Come Get Me': A Muslim Mother's Account of Britain's Worsening Anti-Muslim Hate Crisis

Naomi Green was at home when her phone lit up. Her 12-year-old son had sent her a message from school: 'Mum, come get me.' He had just been told by classmates who had taken part in the Belfast riots that 'foreigners like you are going to go home.'

Green, an assistant secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain who converted to Islam 20 years ago, said the incident was not an isolated one. It came during a period she described with startling clarity: 'I literally felt like I was in a dystopia.'

Her account, first reported by The Guardian, is one of many emerging from Muslim communities across the United Kingdom, where leaders and campaigners say anti-Muslim hatred has reached a scale not seen in decades, and where they argue the government's response has fallen dangerously short.

Children Bearing the Brunt

Green said her son's experience at school reflected a broader pattern she had been hearing about across communities. Students who had participated in the Belfast riots had returned to classrooms and directed threats at Muslim peers.

'Nobody who was attacked was a so-called illegal migrant,' she said, 'but they're conflating Muslim communities with illegal migration, with just not being white.'

Her daughter, she added, had drawn her own conclusions from watching the climate around her. 'I have to work twice as hard to prove that I belong here,' her daughter told her.

These are not abstract fears. Akeela Ahmed, head of the British Muslim Trust (BMT), which serves as the government's official partner for monitoring anti-Muslim hatred, described her own son's experience at school. During a class exercise where students shared their middle names, another pupil responded to her son's name by saying: 'Oh, you're called al-Qaida.'

The Numbers Behind the Fear

Anti-Muslim hate crime in England and Wales rose by 19 per cent in the 12 months to March 2025, climbing from 2,690 to 3,199 offences, according to Home Office figures. Over a period of three months, BMT recorded 27 attacks against 25 mosques in 23 different parts of the country. In Scotland, Muslims were the target of nearly a third of all religious hate crimes.

A recent BMT survey found that more than half of British Muslims, 56 per cent, had experienced religious prejudice in the past year. Muslim women have been particularly affected, with accounts of hijabs being ripped off, harassment on public transport, and women being filmed in public spaces without consent.

Ahmed, who said she had been travelling across the country in recent weeks, described what she had witnessed as unlike anything in recent memory. 'We're in an unprecedented situation since the Southport riots of 2024,' she said. 'The violence we're seeing now really reminds me of that kind of racism, but this is also another level.'

A Government Accused of Hesitation

Shaista Gohir, founder of the Muslim Women's Network, said the government had acted decisively after the 2024 riots but had since pulled back as Reform UK climbed in the polls.

'They lacked courage to actually speak out,' she said. 'They're really scared about saying the wrong thing, and the far right can see that.'

A government spokesperson said ministers were taking 'decisive action,' pointing to a record £40 million for protective security at places of worship, £4 million for programmes tackling anti-Muslim hatred, and the adoption of a formal definition of anti-Muslim hatred earlier this year. A social cohesion action plan has also been launched.

Gohir, however, said those measures had not gone nearly far enough. She also raised the matter in the House of Lords this week, asking when the government planned to renew its hate crime strategy, which lapsed in 2020, and why it had not moved to close loopholes in hate crime law being exploited by extremists.

The surge in anti-Muslim hate crime comes at a time when community leaders say the institutions meant to protect British Muslims are either too cautious or too slow to act. With the government's hate crime strategy now six years out of date and mosque attacks spanning cities from Glasgow to east London, community leaders are pressing for legislative action before the next wave of unrest. 'We will not tolerate violence against people, hateful views against people,' Ahmed said.