Neil Basu, deputy assistant commissioner for the Metropolitan Police and senior national coordinator for counter terrorism, commended the response of the Muslim community [1], who stopped the man suspected to have carried out the attack before turning him over to police. One man who apprehended the man told the BBC that the individual had said he “wanted to kill Muslims” [2] and an attempted vehicular attack on Iraqi migrants in Sweden [3]. There is little doubt that this incident targeted the Muslim community, and while we cannot speculate as to what exactly motivated this violence, such an incident demands that we reflect on the harm that Islamophobia can cause.

Heightened tensions

The attack took place near Finsbury Park Mosque and the Muslim Welfare House on Seven Sisters Road, north London. Finsbury Park Mosque is infamous because the violent extremist, Abu Hamza, preached there before his arrest in 2004. Since then, under new leadership, the mosque and its leaders have made outstanding contributions to the local community, which has been recognised nationally [4]. Regardless of this recognition, parts of the press continue to demonise the mosque.

On the night of the attack, Mail Online referenced Hamza [5] – who was sentenced to life in prison in the US in 2015 [6] – in their headline for a report on the attack.

As a researcher on Islamophobia, I have had the opportunity to speak with members of the mosque’s leadership a few times. I recall a conversation I had with Mohammed Kozbar, then chairman of the mosque, in 2012 about a pig’s head left on the gate to the mosque in 2010 [7] and a hoax anthrax threat sent to the mosque in 2011 [8]. He told me then that the community was feeling vulnerable and fearful. He reminded me as well that the media rarely, if ever, reported on the positive contributions made by members of the mosque.

In 2015, in a report for Tell MAMA (the UK’s primary watchdog for anti-Muslim hate) and the Metropolitan Police [9], I identified a cluster of nine anti-Muslim hate crimes and incidents targeting the mosque. The misplaced association of the congregation with violent extremism continues to make the site a target for hate. In this sense, it should sadly come as no surprise that Finsbury Park has been targeted once again.

Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hatred have demonstrably increased year on year. This is evident in police data that I have reviewed from 2012 to 2014 [10] and in reports by Tell MAMA that include data from victims, charities, and police forces across the country [11]. Between May 2013 and September 2016, 100 mosques were targeted and attacked.

Spikes of hate tend to follow attacks perpetrated by Muslims in the UK and abroad. These dynamics are evident in research on the attacks in Paris in 2015. The three atrocities that claimed lives in Westminster, Manchester, and London Bridge have led to a major increase in anti-Muslim hate [12] based both on police evidence and reports from Muslim communities [13].

These spikes are not localised and they affect Muslim communities across the country. In this sense, the way that Muslims are framed in reporting on terrorism directly harms communities by putting them in the cross-hairs of lone criminals, angry citizens, and extreme right-wing terrorists.

Anti-Muslim hate plays a role

This attack, as the Metropolitan Police were quick to note, has all the hallmarks of a terrorist incident, and it is being investigated as such [14]. More details about the attacker’s motivation is likely to emerge as the investigation continues.

There is a blurry line between hate crime and terrorism. And it is difficult to impute any kind of causality between far-right extremists and such an attack.

What is clear, however, is that irresponsible sensationalism and the growth of Islamophobia inspires fear, anxiety, and hate towards Muslims. A report published in May from the Home Affairs Select Committee showed that social media is an important medium for sharing and distributing these sentiments [15]. Platforms such as Facebook and Twitter provide an environment in which cliques of users normalise and legitimate anti-Muslim ideologies.

It is important that the Finsbury Park investigation questions whether or not the attacker was influenced by extreme right-wing opinions disseminated online. However, it is also crucial to see if this individual was influenced by the press when he selected Muslims in the Finsbury Park area as his target.

Whether or not this incident is considered a terrorist attack should not distract us from the bigger problem: the failure of politicians and the media to effectively counter Islamophobia has caused Muslims to become targets of violence on their way home from prayer.

Bharath Ganesh
Researcher, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford

* The Conversation. 19 juin 2017, 15:09 CEST:
https://theconversation.com/finsbury-park-attack-shows-the-harm-islamophobia-continues-to-inflict-on-muslim-communities-79682

Finsbury Park Mosque: from ‘terrorist hostel’ to symbol of modernity, openness and tolerance

The shadow of Abu Hamza and Al Qaeda lies long and heavy across Finsbury Park Mosque in north London. The mosque has long been cast in the public imagination by the terrorist activities that were so brazenly carried out there until Hamza and his followers were finally ejected after police raids in 2003.

Along with a former MI5 agent, Reda Hassaine, who was undercover in the mosque during the late 1990s, I wrote the book about how Hamza captured the mosque by force from what was, at the time, a rather naive mosque committee [16]. The committee thought he would be an honest broker in a dispute between two factions – but he turned out to be a thorough menace. His charm fooled them. Not only did he indoctrinate young men in the ways of jihad [17], sending them variously to Yemen, Pakistan and Afghanistan, he trained them how to raise money through credit card fraud and other scams, like selling stolen property which police found during their raids.

A new committee has worked hard since 2004 to reform the practices at the mosque – and they have done an excellent job. But it has proved impossible to remove the reputational stain [see above] that was created by several years of Finsbury Park being a meeting place for Abu Qatada, Omar Bakri Mohammed and the followers of the now banned Al-Muhajiroun and even Anjem Choudary [18] – imprisoned last year on terror related charges for supporting Islamic State.

I recall on the anniversary of 9/11 on September 11 2002, when radical islamists descended on the mosque in their hundreds to “celebrate” the twin towers tragedy. They praised the killers as martyrs and did it in the full glare of the media. I broadcast live from the spot in an atmosphere of seething radical rage. I will never forget it.

In the same way that Finsbury Park Mosque acted as a magnet for radicals, so it seems it is now a magnet for those with equally abhorrent views, who see this historic stain cast over this small corner of Islington borough as some kind of representative symbol of British Islam.

Ironically, the new committee at Finsbury Park is a symbol of modernity, openness and tolerance. It holds an open house every year and welcomes non-Muslims to share in the mosque’s faith in a multi-faith context. The committee is not naive – it knows that the fact that the mosque was used as a kind of Al Qaeda hostel and a proofing ground for terrorists was going to be a hard myth to dispel. When I say to people that I worked undercover in Finsbury Park Mosque when Hamza was in charge their eyes widen and faces fix with incredulity. Finsbury Park Mosque has become totemic in the politics of terror.

But in a sense this is always the problem with totems, they last long in the memory because they are meaningful in popular culture. We reach for them when we try to explain conflict, trauma and bad news. A number of the 9/11 conspirators had been through Finsbury Park Mosque, as had the London bombers of July 7 and 21 2005.

The difference now is that the intolerance that emanated from that holy place back then has moved on. Of course others have today demonstrated with a hate filled agenda that they aren’t interested in the innocence of Finsbury Park’s current worshippers – they are attacking the symbol of British Islamic radicalism which no longer resides in this part of north London.

Hamza is of course now locked up thousands of miles away in a supermax prison in Colorado, having been sentenced in 2015 to life without parole [19]. He is undoubtedly paying for his crimes, as evidenced in a New York court during his lengthy trial in 2014. But the radical menace he unleashed now claims fresh innocent victims, only today it is sadly those Muslims who have shown that Islam can be tolerant, open and inclusive.

It is these extremes from all sides that we must challenge. They are the threats to democracy and the values of civil society that we need to protect.

Kurt Barling
Professor of Journalism, Middlesex University

* The Conversation. 19 juin 2017, 17:49 CEST:
https://theconversation.com/finsbury-park-mosque-from-terrorist-hostel-to-symbol-of-modernity-openness-and-tolerance-79715