Outgoing Muslim Council leader criticises lack of government contact

BBC/Emma Lynch

Zara Mohammed was elected in 2021

When Zara Mohammed became the first female leader of one of the largest representative bodies for British Muslims in 2021, she already had a lot on her plate: rising Islamophobia, the Covid-19 pandemic, and a government refusing to engage with the group.

The then 29-year-old could not have imagined three years later, she would be facing one of the biggest challenges of her career - rioting across England and Northern Ireland, often explicitly targeting Muslims, and still no government contact.

The violent unrest, triggered by false rumours that the Southport knife attacker was a Muslim asylum seeker, saw bricks hurled at mosques and Islamophobic chants on the streets.

Many Muslims and people of colour felt afraid to leave their homes.

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"It was so visceral. We were watching on our screens: people breaking doors down, stopping cars, attacking taxi drivers, smashing windows, smashing mosques," she told the BBC. "The kind of evil we saw was really terrifying and I felt like, am I even making a difference?"

As Ms Mohammed ends her time as general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain – on Saturday, Wajid Akhter was elected as her replacement – she spoke to the BBC about the difficulties she has faced.

She described an "unbelievable tidal wave of Islamophobia" in the UK, which she said was made more difficult to tackle due to the ongoing policy of government non-engagement.

"It was the Southport riots for us that made it really quite alarming. The justification was there, the urgency, the necessity of engagement was there, British Muslims were under attack, mosques were under attack and the largest umbrella Muslim organisation wasn't being talked to," she said.

Strains in the relationship between successive governments and the MCB began over a decade ago. Ties were severed with the MCB in 2009 under then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown, after the group's deputy leader signed a declaration advocating attacks on the Royal Navy if it tried to stop arms for Hamas. Hamas's military wing had been proscribed as a terror group in the UK eight years earlier.

The deputy secretary later resigned and Ms Mohammed said the MCB made clear such actions did not reflect the organisation, leading to a brief period of re-engagement.

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Online disinformation helped to spark protests after three children were killed in Southport

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