British Muslim women feel less safe than a year ago, poll suggests

ITV News

30-04-2025

Almost half of British Muslim women feel less safe than they did a year ago, blaming a rise in Islamophobia, according to a new poll.
Research carried out by pollsters Survation found that 30% of Muslim respondents said they did not feel safe going out at night, while more than half said politicians in the UK had made them feel less welcome.
Hina Khan, 27, told ITV News she regularly encounters Islamophobia online, including accusations that she supports extremism.
The Londoner said the experience has made her feel unwelcome in the UK.
''I will never understand how this kind of hatred can exist in the world,'' she said.
'You have to shut yourself off from it, and build a kind of wall to separate the emotion from the facts. But even with that wall up, it still chips away at you. Over time, it makes you feel small. You start to question how safe you really are in this country — or whether you truly belong here.
'I sometimes feel loathed and unwelcome just walking through the streets of London — not because of anything I've done, but simply because of who I am – a Muslim woman.'
The poll follows a warning earlier this year from Tell Mama, an organisation that monitors anti-Muslim hate, which reported that anti-Muslim hate in the UK had reached record levels.
Tell Mama recorded 6,313 incidents of anti-Muslim hate in 2024, representing a 43% increase on the previous year. Of those, 5,837 were verified by the organisation.
Its Director, Iman Atta, said the findings of the poll, along with Tell Mama's own data, highlighted the growing problem of Islamophobia and its influence on daily decision-making for British Muslims.
'This sense of a collective self-enforced sense of restraint of what they can do and when they can go out is troubling since it has mental and emotional impacts, as well as economic impacts that are acutely felt by British Muslim women,' Iman Atta said.
More than a quarter of Muslims surveyed said they had stopped using social media entirely as a result of the abuse and harmful content they had encountered online.
Experts say this been driven by changes to social media algorithms, the Southport murders last July and the Israel-Gaza conflict.
Tufail Hussain, UK Director of Islamic Relief, which commissioned the poll, said that too many people were increasingly feeling emboldened to post harmful content and that more needed to be done to protect minority communities.
'Our charity has also felt the brunt of a worrying rise in Islamophobia online, and particularly across social media. People increasingly feel they can post malicious and hateful content without any consequences,' Mr Hussain said.
'Social media has become a dangerous space for false news in which organisations such as Islamic Relief, who are committed to helping and saving people's lives across the world including the UK, are instead subjected to hateful abuse.
'This survey is a wake-up call for the UK government to do everything it can do make the Muslim community safe and for tech companies to tackle hate speech and protect users online. We cannot tolerate abuse, harassment, or discrimination based on religion.'
Dr Naomi Green, Assistant Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain, said the findings were 'more evidence of the mainstreaming of Islamophobia'.
'Online spaces and weaponised algorithms like Musk's X/Twitter have become wastelands of abuse and misinformation towards Muslims and other vulnerable groups that is dragging our society into an ever darker space,' Dr Green said.
'Responsible digital regulation frameworks are essential to keeping our society safe both mentally and physically.'