The Conservative party has suspended 14 members for allegedly making Islamophobic comments after a string of abusive posts were uncovered on social media.

The party was responding to racist and abusive remarks that were discovered and collected online by the @matesjacob Twitter account and made by people who had said or indicated they were members of the party.

The suspensions come at a time of growing scrutiny of the Conservative party’s record on Islamophobia. The former Tory chairman Sayeeda Warsi again called for an internal inquiry and suggested the most senior figures in the party – including Theresa May – needed to take the problem more seriously.

The messages included one from an individual who wrote that they would like to “turf all Muslims out of public office”. Another said they wanted to “get rid of all mosques”. Many comments were found on a Facebook group supporting Jacob Rees-Mogg.

A third said they could not vote for Sajid Javid, the home secretary, in any forthcoming leadership race because that would amount to a vote for “Islam to lead this country”.

A post in the Facebook group supporting Rees-Mogg, which showed a map of all mosques in Britain, provoked several hostile responses, including: “This is not a Muslim country” and “We’re just letting the takeover happen”.

A Tory spokesperson said the Facebook group was “in no way affiliated with the Conservative party”, but it had identified “some people who are party members and they have been immediately suspended, pending further investigation”.

A spokesperson for the Muslim Council of Britain said the posts showed “the scale of Islamophobia at all levels of the party is astonishing”. The council repeated its call for an independent inquiry into anti-Muslim abuse within the party.

The anonymous author of the @matesjacob account said he had profiled 25 people he believed were Conservative members at the time of their postings.

Apart from the 14 suspended members, the membership of three others is believed to have lapsed, leaving a further eight whose position is unclear, although the Conservatives do not immediately believe they are members.

The Twitter account owner said: “I was disgusted by the racism and Islamophobia that I was seeing in these online groups, and felt it was going unreported.

“Until I started focusing on Conservative party members, I was simply trying to get Jacob Rees-Mogg to acknowledge the horror that was being written in a group devoted to him.”

Warsi, who has campaigned on the issue, said the party had “a deep-rooted problem of anti-Muslim comments, Islamophobic comments, racist comments”.

She accused Javid of using “dog whistle” politics, telling Newsnight: “However much he panders to the right of our party, sadly the right of our party believe he’s far too Muslim to be the leader of the party.”

Warsi said she first highlighted the problem of Islamophobia three years ago, raising it with three successive chairmen and the prime minister. She accused the leadership of “turning a blind eye to this – they have just simply hoped it would go away”.

The peer also called on the Conservative chief executive, Sir Mick Davis, to intervene, arguing the Tory chairman and the prime minister had not taken the issue seriously enough.

“I cannot fight this fight alone,” Warsi wrote on Twitter. “I have written to Sir Mick Davis to stand by me and show leadership where Brandon Lewis [and] Theresa May have failed.”

In an earlier interview with the BBC, Warsi said it was her job to stop the “re-Ukipification” of the party, and added: “Burying your head in the sand is not going to make problems go away.”

Speaking of the prime minister, the peer said: “She doesn’t listen, she fails to acknowledge when there is a problem. It’s probably symptomatic of the way in which her leadership has dealt with other matters.”

Earlier on Tuesday, it emerged one of the party’s council candidates had previously been suspended for comparing Islam to alcoholism in a tweet in 2015. In the same year, he wrote: “Turkey buys oil from Isis. Muslims sticking together.”

Peter Lamb, a council candidate in Harlow, apologised earlier this month, saying: “The tweet was aimed at the extremists that have hijacked Islam and are cowardly hiding behind the religion” and that it was not meant to apply to “those who follow the religion peacefully and are contributing to the diversity of the UK”.

On Tuesday, he tweeted: “I have reflected on my comments and decided that I should step down as a local election candidate and resign [from] the Conservative party with immediate effect.”

A Conservative spokesperson told the website Politics Home that, at the time of the initial tweets, Lamb had been suspended from the party before later being readmitted by his local association. The Harlow Conservative Association chairman, Clive Souter, described the punishment as a “slap on the wrist”.

But Warsi said that was inadequate. “It is appalling that a man suspended for Islamophobic comments just two years ago has been readmitted and allowed to stand as a candidate,” she said. “Giving him what his local party chair calls a ‘slap on the wrist’ shows again this is not an issue confined to individuals, but one that has gripped the institution.”

James Cleverly, the deputy Tory chairman, said Lamb’s comments were “completely inappropriate”. But he added that he disagreed “deeply” with Warsi’s contention that the party is institutionally racist.

“We do not accept within the Conservative party Islamophobia, racism, antisemitism,” he said. “When it is presented to us either locally or centrally, we take immediate action.”