The United Kingdom's first anti‐Muslim pogroms in a context of genocidal Islamophobia in Gaza

In summer 2024, the United Kingdom was the scene of several days of horrific public attacks against Muslim populations. While some have described these attacks as spontaneous riots between far‐right groups and anti‐racist activists, these were in fact the United Kingdom's first anti‐Muslim pogroms, occurring in a very specific genocidal context against the Muslim populations of Gaza. In this commentary, I explore why such pogroms happened by analysing the nature of British Islamophobia, its specific geographies and the political context in which they were able to develop to better understand how to combat anti‐Muslim racism and thus better protect Muslims in Britain.