Shafaqna English– Faced with a 19% surge in hate crimes and Islamophobic attacks, the Muslim Council of Britain has issued urgent security protocols, turning places of worship into fortified sanctuaries.
The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) is today releasing an updated Mosque Safety and Security Guidance toolkit for mosques and community centres across the UK.
The MCB urges community members entrusted with stewarding mosques and community centres not to be complacent. In recent years, numerous potential mass fatality attacks planned on places of worship on UK soil have been intercepted by Police and criminals charged and convicted, with target mosques including those in Leeds, Cardiff, Greenock, Keighley, Belfast, London and several others.
Anti-Muslim incidents across UK occurred, on average, at least once a week
The launch comes ahead of the ninth anniversary of the devastating 19 June 2017 Finsbury Park terrorist attack, in which a far-right criminal deliberately drove a van into worshippers near Finsbury Park Mosque and Muslim Welfare House in London, killing Makram Ali, 51, and seriously injuring 12 others.
Nine years on from that tragic night, the threat from far-right and white supremacist terrorist attacks remains a deeply entrenched and evolving danger for British Muslims. This includes mass casualty attacks, as well as repeatable patterns of vandalism, intimidation, threats and Islamophobic hate crime. In the last three months alone, notable anti-Muslim incidents across the UK have occurred on average at least once a week.
Source: Muslim Council of Britain