Three girls murdered, two adults critically injured, eight children stabbed, nearly 400 arrests across 20 cities, and a battle for Britain's identity - all of these were at the center of the violent protests that engulfed the UK over the past few weeks.
After two particularly tense weeks, the spokesperson for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer expressed relief at the de-escalation of the disturbances. However, the police remain on high alert, anticipating that the unrest could flare up again.
What caused the wave of violent protests in the UK? The factors that led to them, what the British government must avoid doing to prevent similar events in the future, and the accusations of a connection to Israel—all are covered in the article before you.
The immediate suspect
On July 29, a stabbing incident occurred at a children's yoga and dance workshop in the city of Southport in the UK. The attacker murdered three girls, critically injured two adults, and wounded eight more children - with five of them seriously injured. Shortly after the attack, rumors about the attacker's identity began circulating on social media, claiming he was a Muslim immigrant.
The very next day, many protesters gathered outside a mosque in Southport to protest the brutal murder, believing, based on these rumors, that the killer was a Muslim. The protest was led by members of several far-right groups who clashed with police, set a police van on fire, and attacked the mosque. More than fifty police officers were injured during the riots.
Contrary to the usual practice of not releasing the identity of minors who are arrested, the British police announced that the attacker was Axel Rodkovana, a 17-year-old Welsh-born Christian from a Rwandan immigrant family. Despite this, the fact that Rodkovana was not Muslim and was himself born in Britain may not have been enough for the rioters, as he was still the son of immigrants from Rwanda. It is possible that by this point, the Rubicon had already been crossed, and the truth no longer mattered.
In the following days, the riots spread to about 20 other cities in England and Northern Ireland, including London, Liverpool, Manchester, Stoke, and Belfast. In Sunderland, a police station was set on fire, injuring three officers, and the next day, protesters attacked immigrant-owned businesses and hotels housing asylum seekers. They also clashed with police and human rights activists, as well as Islamic groups that took to the streets in response to the protests. Pro-Palestinian organizations also seized the opportunity, demonstrating against Israel and clashing with anti-immigration protesters.
The main disturbances continued until August 5, with 378 rioters arrested by that point. However, some riots occurred afterward, and last Saturday night, ten police officers were injured in Newtown due to Molotov cocktails thrown at them. The violent protests even led Muslim-majority Malaysia to issue a travel warning for the UK.
Blaming the victim
Regarding the violent protests in the UK, it is worth noting how easily fake news can capture the public's imagination and incite it against a false enemy, as well as how difficult it is to repair the damage caused by such misinformation. As the saying goes, "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes." However, the central issue underlying the unrest in the UK was the emotions stirred by the immigration issue and the reasons for it.
It is essential to state unequivocally: even without the violence that accompanied these protests, there was no justification for continuing to blame British Muslims for something done by one teenager who was not even Muslim. However, as the UN Secretary-General said about the October 7 massacre—these protests did not occur in a vacuum. It could be said that this is a case of blaming the victim, but in this instance, the victim is often the perpetrator.
In the past seven years, Muslims, many of them immigrants or the children of immigrants, have carried out 13 terrorist attacks in the UK, including the 2017 London Bridge attack, which killed eight people and injured 48, and a stabbing attack against a 70-year-old man last October in protest against the war in Gaza. Additionally, during this period, at least six planned terrorist attacks by Muslims were foiled in the UK, including an attempt to assassinate former Prime Minister Theresa May and another attempt to bomb a hospital in Leeds last year. In fact, almost all the terrorist attacks and attempted attacks in the UK during these years were carried out by Muslims.
Labeling the protests as "Islamophobia" is accurate, but not in the sense of hatred towards Muslims, rather in the original Greek meaning of the word "phobia," which denotes fear (in Greek mythology, "Phobos" is the god of fear).
The fear of the rise of Islam in the UK was a central factor in the success of Nigel Farage's Reform Party, whose main platform was opposition to immigration after the Conservative Party failed colossally in addressing the issue during its 14 years in power.
The treatment failed, the patient died
The authorities' handling of criminals caught in the act has been severely criticized in the UK. A survey conducted by the British government's Research Council found that only 40 percent of the public trusts the police, compared to 62 percent in 2017. A British Parliament report identified one of the key reasons for the decline in trust as the 2018 double murder committed by an Afghan Muslim immigrant named Janbaz Tarin.
In 2022, the UK's Victims' Commissioner found that everyday crimes are poorly handled, while 68% of Britons felt that the police had "completely given up on trying to solve crimes like shoplifting and burglaries." A report by the Ministry of Justice from that same year notes that the police lack sufficient manpower.
The British courts have also faced criticism on this issue. For example, in the case of Mohisnath Chowdhury, a Muslim of Bangladeshi origin, who in 2017 stabbed police officers while shouting "Allahu Akbar," the court acquitted him of terrorism charges and convicted him of a lesser offense of attempting to commit a terrorist act. After about a year in prison, he was released, immediately resumed planning attacks in the UK, and was caught in 2019, this time receiving a life sentence.
As Hobbes wrote in Leviathan, in the natural state, in the absence of a sovereign to deter people from harming each other, the fear (or phobia) that someone else might harm me will drive me to attack them first - "If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first." The expressions of hatred towards Muslims during the protests were unjustified, but they did not arise from nothing. The British felt that the sovereign - be it the government, the police, or the courts - was not protecting them, and were driven by fear.
Many of those who led the violent protests in the UK did so purely out of racist motives, but the British authorities, who rightly condemned them, must not take the easy way out by labeling the protests as "racism" and dismissing them out of hand. Starmer and his government must understand that the overly lenient immigration policies in the UK and the inadequate handling of crime by immigrants and Muslims were the fertile ground that allowed these hostile sentiments to flourish and drove thousands to the streets. If they want to prevent such incidents from recurring, they must address the root of the problem and restore a sense of security to the British public.
There's always someone to blame
Unlike the Palestinians, who, as we know, never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity, it seems that anti-Semites never miss an opportunity to blame the Jews.
Several prominent far-right figures in the UK, which has seen a massive surge in anti-Semitic incidents since October 7, accused Israel of being behind the unrest below the surface. David Miller, a former academic who was fired from the University of Bristol in the UK for spreading anti-Semitic conspiracies, claimed that Israel instigated the riots as revenge on the UK for canceling arms shipments to Israel. He was joined by British rapper Lowkey, who in November released the song "Palestine Will Never Die."
Dr. Andreas Krieg, a professor at King's College London, claimed that the protesters were a product of subversion by Israel, along with Russia and China, our well-known close allies. How convenient that there's always someone to blame.
