Five Birmingham mosques were attacked with a sledgehammer yesterday.

A week ago, Muslims praying in two mosques in New Zealand were gunned down by a far-Right extremist.

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People have been left suicidal and afraid to leave their homes by a wave of hate crime “unleashed” after the EU referendum, MPs have found.

The first inquiry by the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Hate Crime warned that rising offences were causing “psychological and emotional harm”.

A report contains testimonies from victims who suffered mental illness, depression and became suicidal, including one who wrote: “Hate crime really destroyed my life. I wanted to commit suicide. It was two years of hell.”

One woman described how the abuse she endured made her “bedridden”, and the parent of a transgender child said she was “fearful about whether I can keep my child and our family safe. I lose sleep, find it hard to cope.”

The APPG was told that many hate crime victims try to avoid abuse by changing their commutes, leaving jobs, not taking public transport, altering their appearance and removing religious clothing.

“They make mention of how the abuse made them feel afraid, even to leave their homes at all,” the report concluded.

The British Transport Police raised the possibility of a link between hate crime and suicide in a submission to the committee, and academics chronicled feelings of vulnerability, anxiety and shame among victims.

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Anjem Choudary walks free today despite becoming ‘hardened’ in jail and more determined than ever to spread his toxic Islamist propaganda.

The hate preacher’s already militant views became ‘far more extreme and aggressive’ while locked up and he now sees regards himself as a ‘martyr’, according to those who met him in prison.

And he is plotting to ‘circumvent’ strict control orders aimed at stopping him spreading his message that has radicalised hundreds of disaffected young Muslims and helped incite dozens of murders, it was alleged.

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The Polish Embassy in London part-funded an event that gave a platform to right-wing extremists in the UK, a BBC Newsnight investigation has found.

The embassy helped to finance a book fair in Slough in 2017, which included speakers from Poland well-known for promoting hate speech in their country.

Experts have questioned whether such speakers should be allowed into the UK.

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HE is the Liverpool striker who has already netted 31 goals in his first season at the club.

But Egyptian ace Mo Salah has also inspired a hilarious fans’ chant which is helping to dismantle racial prejudice in the football world.

Fans have been filmed, in both the stadium and pubs, singing: “If he’s good enough for you, he’s good enough for me, if he scores another few, then I’ll be Muslim too.”

The chant — to the tune of Dodgy’s 1996 hit Good Enough — also has the line: “He’s sitting in the mosque, that’s where I want to be.”

The striker, who bagged his latest goal in Saturday’s 4-1 win over West Ham, responded to the chant on Twitter this week by posting three “heart-eye” emojis after someone uploaded a video of fans singing it.

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The Home Office has been urged to prevent a Polish far-right speaker from entering the UK, amid growing concern about extremist groups sending people to Britain to spread hateful views.

Rafał Ziemkiewicz, a Polish author and journalist who has compared Muslims to “invaders” and “barbarians”, is due to speak at events in Bristol and Cambridge on Friday and Saturday.

He has written articles stating that he sees “no hope” for France as French Muslims are waiting for “white people to get exhausted while they gradually expand their sharia enclaves … taking control over the entire country”.

One of the events at which Ziemkiewicz was due to talk, in Acton, west London, on Sunday, has already been cancelled after Rupa Huq, the Labour MP for Ealing Central and Acton, was alerted to it. But Huq wants the Home Office to prevent Ziemkiewicz from entering the UK.

She said: “Ziemkiewicz’s presence is not conducive to good race relations anywhere in the UK and just as I have spoken in the House of Commons urging that we ban [Donald] Trump I similarly contend that Rafał Ziemkiewicz is not welcome on these shores.”

She said it was her understanding that the Acton event had now been moved to Slough. “I am relieved that it was blocked after the licensee became aware of the true nature of the gathering. This is a man with a track record of deliberately antagonising minority communities with his bigoted comments. His party pieces of Holocaust denial and Islamophobia are not welcome in Ealing.”

Ziemkiewicz is not the first far-right speaker from Poland who has attempted to come to Britain to increase their following and raise funds. In February last year Jacek Międlar, a former priest, was detained at Stansted airport to prevent him from attending a far-right rally in Telford, Shropshire. He has called Jews “a cancer” and accused Muslims of running grooming gangs in the UK.

“This is a growing movement and the problem is in Poland there are no checks and balances.”

The Labour MP for Cambridge, Daniel Zeichner, expressed similar concern over the event there. He said: “Any individual or group supporting Islamophobia, antisemitism or racial discrimination is not welcome.

“I would pose the question to the organisers of this event whether they believe a speaker that has made anti-Islamic or antisemitic statements will be warmly received in Cambridge. I can assure you that the residents of the city I represent do not support views of this nature in any way.”

Ziemkiewicz insisted his appearances would not be incendiary, saying: “I don’t see any reason to worry about my meetings in UK … There is nothing in my books, articles etc that would be against the law or indecent.

“I’m well known in Poland and about 10 of my books have been on bestseller lists … For more than 20 years my work has been in the mainstream of Polish public life. As long as the conservative and patriotic position is not banned in Europe … I strongly deny such accusations.”

Huq said the cancellation of Ziemkiewicz’s meeting in Acton was the second time in four months that the borough of Ealing had shown it “will not tolerate hatred and extremism from neo-Nazi speakers from Poland”.

Marian Kowalski, the vice-chair of the Polish far-right political party National Movement, was unable to speak in Ealing in October after the booking at Brentside high school was revoked when the school became aware of his views. The event was moved to a Polish restaurant, Kuźnia Smaku, in South Ealing Road but the authorities prevented him from speaking there too.

At the time Ealing police posted on Facebook, saying: “[We] have worked with our partners and used available legislation effectively to send a clear message that preaching hate is not acceptable.”

Mughal called for the Home Office to increase its focus on the issue. “Why are we leading the charge?” he asked. “We are a small NGO. The Home Office needs to look at what is happening … they need to be more proactive on this issue and engage with groups like us.”

A Home Office spokesperson said it did not comment on individual cases but added: “The home secretary may exclude an EEA national on the grounds of public policy or security if they pose a genuine, present and sufficiently serious threat.”

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Far-right groups are being investigated for potentially breaching Charity Commission rules after the Guardian found they were distributing food and clothes to homeless people.

The fascist party the National Revival of Poland – known as Narodowe Odrodzenie Polski (NOP) – is one of several far-right groups across Britain that have launched charity campaigns.

The NOP’s “White Rescue: Charity campaign for Europeans”, is billed as a whites-only outreach scheme, has involved working with the far-right British group National Front to hand out food to homeless people in Glasgow, Exeter and London.

Idź Pod Prąd, a far-right media organisation that runs local community groups, also claims it is running a club helping Polish veterans in Stoke-on-Trent.

In Newcastle, the English Defence League has been posting on its Facebook page to say it is gathering donations for “homeless outreach” work, which is run by the EDL Angels, the women’s faction of the group.

When approached by the Guardian, a spokesperson said that they did not discriminate and worked with people from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. They claimed the women’s outreach work had been wrongly advertised as being linked with the EDL and as a result, the local chairman resigned on Saturday.

These groups are not authorised charities and in some instances are openly soliciting for donations. Charity Commission rules state that a charity cannot be used as a vehicle for the expression of political or extremist views.

“We will further assess the material … on these organisations’ activities regarding outreach work with the homeless in order to determine whether this presents regulatory concerns and, if so, what regulatory action, if any, may need to be taken,” a spokesperson for the Charity Commission said.

Anti-far right groups described the findings as “very worrying” and said far-right groups were “preying on the vulnerable”.

Fiyaz Mughal, the founder of Faith Matters, which works to reduce extremism, said: “This is a classic way of extremist groups reaching into communities. This is how Islamist extremist and far-right groups try and prey on vulnerable people and on wider populations, by reaching out to the vulnerable and to the needy and then manipulating them over time to their extremist narratives.”

The NOP and Idź Pod Prąd have networks and groups operating in the UK.

On the website of National Front, which has been working with the neo-Nazi NOP in several cities, a post from April 2017, says: “The group has been working across the country to provide support for the homeless and those in need.”

When approached by the Guardian the group responded: “Of course our chary [sic] campaign White Rescue [is] still operational. However, due to false number of text appearing in Guardian about nationalists movements and political parties such as Golden Dawn [an ultranationalist, far-right political party in Greece], we are not interested in providing … any information about our activities.”

Idź Pod Prąd said their club in Stoke-on-Trent organised help for Polish veterans in the UK. It did not respond to a request for comment.

The EDL Newcastle division has been promoting its homeless outreach programme over the winter on Facebook. On 19 January a post said: “Can we please share this group [National East Angels Outreach] its [sic] so people can volunteer to help donate towards the angels outreach programme for the homeless in Newcastle.”

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LONDON: The latest wave of terror attacks across Europe has drawn the spotlight on popular platforms being used as a recruiting tool for groups like Daesh to spread their message of hate and recruit young extremists with increasingly sophisticated narratives.

As the front lines of conflict extend from the Middle East to the streets of Europe, media is becoming an increasingly important weapon of war.

The youngest of the perpetrators that carried out last month’s attacks on the busy tourist-filled streets of Barcelona was just 17 years old.

That has led many observers, from academia to the security services, to ask what is driving young people into the arms of terror groups?

According to those trying to combat online extremism, the nature of the content used by groups such as Daesh is forever becoming more sophisticated, with high production values, conveying messages and an ideology that seem to connect to vulnerable youths.

But while social media companies are becoming quicker to close down accounts preaching violence, the extremists are equally quick to open another or find a platform that better serves their needs — such as being able to send encrypted messages.

“They will move from one platform to another depending on where they can operate with least resistance and best outreach,” said Rashad Ali, resident senior fellow from the UK think tank, the Institute of Strategic Dialogue.

“Media consumed is a mixture of short high impact videos, concentrated sermons, memes and online echo chambers reinforcing their ideas and breeding hatred through accentuating the grievance narratives and increasing a sense of victimhood, and superficial fundamentalist appropriation of scripture,” he said.

Fiyaz Mughal, the director and founder of the UK-based community action group Faith Matters, which works to counter extremism, said the quality of media in terms of production, is improving and therefore helping it find a wider audience.

“It is much cleverer. It is done with plots, it is done with themes. It is cleverly thought-out, and essentially it is really well-structured. The industry of extremism has effectively taken root,” he said.

The content of the videos posted is also evolving, according to the international non-profit organization, the Counter Terrorism Project (CTP).

While Daesh videos continue to be violent, often depicting victorious military campaigns, some content has “shifted away from an emphasis on the physical caliphate to stressing the need to fight until death and punish opponents,” according to CTP’s executive director David Ibsen.

He said that videos are beginning to be less about promoting the “wonders” of the utopian caliphate, but rather opting to portray Daesh and its supporters as victims.

Daesh has also begun to more actively encourage its supporters, via online platforms, to carry out more attacks in the West, Russia and parts of the Middle East – rather than calling for new recruits to travel to Iraq or Syria, the NGO said.

Due to the availability of a range of extremist online content, the process of radicalization has also evolved, according to Mughal.
“The extremism journey has changed from 5 to 10 years ago. It had previously involved group radicalization, involving peer-mentor radicalization where individuals would radicalize others and they’d work to reinforce each other’s views as a collective or small group What we find today is that most of it happens with singular individuals going online. There has been a fundamental change in the process,” he said.

He explains that individuals now tend to go online to search for material themselves, rather than being directed to it by a peer. “It is a process of self-radicalization right now,” he said.

There are inevitably a multitude of reasons that motivate people to search out extreme online content, although a common underlying thread seems to be a lack of connection with their community and a lack of a sense of identity.

“The issues, though, are broadly speaking a sense of political grievance, social disenfranchisement, whether that is created by either their political environment and protagonists or recruiters or acquired through their life experiences, personal search for belonging and identity and group connection — am I really British or European or Moroccan or do I have a supra-Islamic identity that makes me part of a global diaspora with a global mission,” Ali said.

Similarly, Mughal notes that there are certain characteristics that may make an individual more susceptible. “Many have existing elements of vulnerability, trauma, instability in their lives,” he said.

He called for more effort to be made to detect those who might be most vulnerable. “We need early education intervention, we need the ability to work out whether people are vulnerable in schools, colleges and universities to this kind of material and are vulnerable to being manipulated.”

In the UK, the government has set up an initiative called Prevent — which forms part of its wider counter-terrorism strategy — that aims to work with Muslim communities to assess who might be vulnerable to radicalization, and provides practical help to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism.

It is a scheme that has been criticized by some who say it could potentially vilify Muslim communities and encourage people to spy on others within their own community.

Mughal rejects these claims. “On a personal basis, I have seen lives saved by the government’s counter extremism agenda,” he said. “Yet, where we have had to be critical because of overreactions in schools to Muslim pupils and through poor decision making around safeguarding that has affected such students, we have done so in a timely and robust fashion,” he said.

There are also organizations such as the UK-based JAN Trust which set up a program called Web Guardians, which works with Muslim women — often mothers — to tackle online extremism in an effort to prevent more young people becoming radicalized.

However, the battle against radicalization also requires social media companies to play a role, as a spokesperson from JAN said: “We have seen and experienced that terrorism affects all irrespective of a person’s background and religion and hence other sectors, not just the public sector, should recognize the need to support the work to tackle extremism. By this I mean the private sector and social media companies who can look to provide resources and funding.”

Social media companies have taken steps toward tackling the problem. For instance, Facebook launched its online Civil Courage Initiative in the UK earlier this year which, among other measures, includes setting up a dedicated desk at Facebook to deal with concerns.

The Counter Extremism Project wants to see more being done to make platforms that allow encrypted messages, such as the online messaging system Telegram, tackle online extremism. “Telegram has become one of the most important platforms for spreading extremist content in 2017. Telegram serves as a major aggregator for extremist content from these and other sites,” said Ibsen.

There are also calls for social media companies to be as vigilant about extremist far-right groups using their platforms as they are about Islamist groups.

“When ministers speak to social media platforms, you’ll find they mostly say ‘you need to tackle Islamist extremists’. It would be nice for ministers to say to social media platforms, that you need to deal with extremism from extreme far-right groups too — because that resets in the minds of some Muslims the reality that there are other forms of extremism,” said Mughal.

Facebook did not respond to requests for comment, while YouTube directed Arab News to an Aug. 1 blog post by the company which outlined its latest efforts to combat online extremism, including using more advanced technology to identify and take down offending material.

“We promptly take down any terrorist content that is reported to us — all Telegram apps have built-in reporting functions and we also accept reports over email. Each day we take down an average of 200 terrorism-related channels before they can get any traction,” said Markus Ra, a spokesperson for Telegram, in a statement.

A service at St John’s on Bethnal Green was held in the wake of the murder last month of Father Jacques Hamel.

One Muslim at the service, Mohammed Amin, publicly denounced Islamic extremism as “barbarity”.

He said: “I am outraged by the way bloodthirsty savages like ISIS have hijacked my religion and used it to justify hate and murder. All Muslims have a duty to resist them.

“I was in America when Father Hamel was murdered by two young French Muslims. We need to stand together when faced by such barbarism.”

Today’s service was led by the Rector of St John’s, The Rev Prebendary Alan Green, who chairs Tower Hamlets’ Inter-Faith Forum which brings faith leaders in the East End, with its large Muslim population, together with the local authority, organisations and police.

Mr Green said: “We must not allow terrorists and criminals to undermine our values nor our commitment to them.

“By joining together today with respect for both Christianity and Islam, we encourage all—with or without a religious faith—to respond to violent provocation by actively proclaiming our values of hospitality, openness and freedom by our words and actions.”

The service was organised by Faith Matters, which was launched in 2006 to tackle hate crime and extremism by reducing conflict through cohesion and integration.

Its founder Fiyaz Mughal said: “Christians and Muslims standing together at mass in France to commemorate those who have been targeted for their faith, like Father Jacques, means that we must make the effort to reach out and not let hatred win.”

Muslims given a brief overview of the worship before the service included Imam Dr Mamadou Bocoum, a lecturer in Islamic Studies and member of the Muslim Law Council UK, Mohammed Amin, the first Muslim in Britain admitted into the Price Waterhouse accountancy partnership, and Tower Hamlets councillor Rabina Khan.

The Home Office has admitted it holds no record of British citizens barred from boarding transatlantic flights despite them being identified by US security officials as potential threats at UK airports.

James Brokenshire, the immigration minister, confirmed that information regarding the numbers, religion and ethnicity of Britons prevented from travelling abroad was not retained by the government.

The admission came after a question by Stella Creasy, the Labour MP, who raised the case of a British Muslim family of 11 who were barred by US authorities from flying from Gatwick to Los Angeles, where they had planned a Disneyland holiday.

The Mahmood family had been granted travel authorisation through a pre-flight visa obtained online but were blocked when attempting to board their plane in December.

In response to Creasy’s question about the matter, Brokenshire wrote: “You asked for the statistical information relating to the numbers, religion, ethnicity and cultural background of British citizens refused entry to other countries and notified of that at UK airports. We do not hold this information, as these matters are from the government making the decision, the carrier and the individual concerned.”

A “small number” of US Department of Homeland Security officials are present at Heathrow, Gatwick and Manchester airports to advise airlines on immigration matters, including the admissibility of individuals travelling to the US, the Home Office letter states.

In a separate letter, David Cameron told Creasy: “It is important to be clear that no UK authorities were involved in any way in preventing the members of the Mahmood family from flying.

“The US Department of Homeland Security has a small number of officials present at UK airports, advising airlines on travel to the US and criteria for entry.

He added: “The advice that these officials provide to airlines is the responsibility of the US authorities, and airlines flying from the UK are not mandated to follow this advice.”

When pressed on whether they were under obligation or not to follow such advice from US security officials at UK airports, airlines including British Airways said they were unable to comment on security measures.

A Home Office spokesman confirmed that under the US immigration advisory programme, US Customs and Border Protection officers had been operating at Heathrow since 2007 and at Gatwick and Manchester since 2008. The spokesman said these officials held no powers in the UK, and that the UK had a similar presence in the US.

Creasy urged the government to ensure that what was happening to British citizens at UK airports was held to account. She said: “I’m concerned the prime minister says no records are held by the UK of what happens at either Heathrow, Gatwick or Manchester – how can I tell my residents their fears are not warranted when our government is turning a blind eye to what the US is doing at our airports? Our Muslim community in Britain deserves better than a shrug – it needs answers.”

She added: “If the US is identifying passengers who are a concern, I’m also surprised the prime minister admits they don’t inform UK authorities about this – they apparently just let them walk out of the airport.

“He also say airlines don’t have to do what homeland security officials say only further compounding the confusion over whats going on.”

Creasy said she would be joining an initiative with Tell Mama, the Islamophobia monitoring project, to call for the UK government to formally address concerns about UK Muslims facing travel restrictions.

The Walthamstow MP said: “We need much more scrutiny of this situation to be confident prejudice plays no part in our security operations – that’s why we’re launching a survey to try to understand the scale and nature of just who is being stopped from travelling and why. Because even if our prime minister operates a don’t ask don’t tell policy, we will. I hope anyone of any faith and none who has ever been stopped from boarding a plane will complete this short survey on the Tell Mama site and help us get to the bottom of what is going on.”

Tell Mama launched the survey this weekend and has already received responses, the organisation said. It aims to collect information to track how often people are barred from flying and to gauge a sense of the profiles of UK citizens who are stopped.

It wants “to get the government to ensure no UK citizen is unfairly treated at UK airports”.

The organisation said in a statement to the Guardian: “These issues have huge impacts on trust and confidence between Muslims and the state and give the impression that Muslims may be targeted because of their faith. This is not the case, but it gives that impression.”

Mohammad Tariq Mahmood, one of the family members turned away from the LA flight, said when the news first emerged: “The children had been counting down the days to the trip for months, and were devastated not to be able to visit their cousins as planned.

“I have never been more embarrassed in my life. I work here, I have a business here. But we were alienated.”

According to US Customs and Border Protection, unarmed, plainclothes officers operate at airports and “discreetly assist airline and security employees with review of traveler information during the processing of US-bound flights”.

Immigration and Advisory Programme officers identify potential threats, who then “engage carriers and travellers to confirm potential matches and make ‘no board’ recommendations to air carriers and the host government to prevent these passengers from boarding flights destined to the United States”.

The Guardian is awaiting a response from US Customs and Border Protection on the number of homeland security officials at UK airports.

After the Mahmoods were barred from travelling to Disneyland, US Customs and Border Protection said: “US Customs and Border Protection welcomes more than a million passengers arriving to the United States every day. CBP officers are charged with enforcing not only immigration and customs laws, but they enforce over 400 laws for 40 other agencies. The religion, faith, or spiritual beliefs of an international traveler are not determining factors about his/her admissibility into the US under US immigration law.”

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