Islamophobia Rising in Britain as Politicians Accused of Complacency
Anti-Muslim prejudice is intensifying across the UK, with polling showing two in five Britons doubt Muslims can integrate and more than half of Muslims reporting personal experience of hostility in the past year. Critics argue mainstream political figures have enabled the climate that fuels hard-right parties.
Anti-Muslim racism in Britain has intensified sharply over the past five years, with new polling and survey evidence pointing to a deepening climate of hostility that mainstream politicians have done too little to confront. A poll published in July found that two out of five Britons believe Muslims cannot integrate into British society, while research earlier in the summer indicated that more than half of Muslims in Britain had personally experienced anti-Islam prejudice in the previous year, and a quarter had faced it in a public place.
The warning comes from Arun Kundnani, editorial director of Monthly Review Press, who argues that mainstream figures have been enabling anti-Muslim racism and thereby creating the ideal conditions for the rise of hard-right political parties. His intervention places the responsibility for the deteriorating climate not only on fringe extremists but on a broader political culture that has tolerated and at times amplified hostile narratives about Muslim communities.
Kundnani notes that five years ago many Muslims wondered whether the prejudices they faced were set to fade. The «war on terror» was dwindling in prominence, and new adversaries such as Russia appeared to be displacing fears of Islamic terrorism in public debate. Yet instead of receding, Islamophobia in Britain has only grown more entrenched, according to the analysis.
The evidence of a worsening environment has been accumulating since two summers ago, when racist riots erupted across the United Kingdom, targeting mosques and asylum hostels. Kundnani describes being disturbed by footage of the events, particularly by parents who brought their young children to watch as mobs attempted, with apparently murderous intent, to break into the buildings. He stresses that it was not only hardened far-right activists involved: a much broader cross-section of British society proved willing to take part in racist violence directed at Muslims, or at asylum seekers assumed to be Muslim.
That wider participation is central to the argument. When prejudice against Muslims is normalised in mainstream political discourse, it ceases to be the preserve of extremist groups and becomes a more general social phenomenon. The polling figures cited — two in five Britons doubting Muslim integration, and more than half of Muslims reporting personal experience of prejudice — suggest that this normalisation has already taken hold across significant sections of the population.
The consequences extend beyond individual incidents of abuse. A climate in which anti-Muslim sentiment is tolerated creates fertile ground for hard-right political parties to organise and attract support, shifting the boundaries of acceptable debate further. Kundnani's warning is that political complacency — the reluctance of mainstream figures to confront and isolate anti-Muslim racism — has helped to produce precisely the conditions in which such parties thrive.
The riots two summers ago, in which mosques and hostels housing asylum seekers were targeted, demonstrated how quickly hostile rhetoric can translate into physical violence. The involvement of families and ordinary citizens, rather than only organised far-right activists, underlined the breadth of the problem. For Muslim communities, the fear and insecurity generated by such events are compounded by everyday experiences of prejudice in public places, workplaces and neighbourhoods.
Kundnani's assessment points to a political failure that spans parties and institutions. Rather than treating anti-Muslim racism as a serious social problem requiring sustained attention, mainstream politicians have often been complicit in framing Muslims as a security or integration problem, lending legitimacy to prejudiced assumptions. That framing, in turn, makes it harder to challenge the harder-edged racism of the far right, because the underlying premise — that Muslims are a problem to be managed — is left largely intact.
The polling and survey data provide a measurable backdrop to these concerns. The finding that two in five Britons doubt the possibility of Muslim integration challenges the notion that prejudice is confined to a marginal minority. Similarly, the report that more than half of British Muslims experienced anti-Islam prejudice within a single year, and that a quarter did so in a public place, indicates that hostility is a routine feature of daily life for many.
With anti-Muslim sentiment showing no sign of receding, the pressure on political leaders to act is mounting. The argument advanced is that without a concerted effort to confront and delegitimise anti-Muslim racism, Britain risks further normalising prejudice and handing greater opportunities to hard-right parties. The evidence gathered over recent years suggests that the cost of complacency is already being borne by Muslim communities across the country.
