Omar Raza was walking near his home in Glasgow’s south side when he was confronted by three men hurling racist abuse, calling him a “fucking Paki” and accusing him of funding Islamic State.

“It was three against one, so I tried to defuse the situation and walk past them. But I was suddenly attacked from behind and put in a head lock.” Raza was kicked to the ground and the bag he was carrying upturned and its contents strewn across the pavement, before his attackers ran off.



“It all happened so quickly,” he told the Guardian on Thursday ahead of Friday prayers at Glasgow Central mosque. “Of course I’ve been the victim of hate speech before, but never a physical assault. You hear a lot of stories from down south but the south side of Glasgow is supposed to be a diverse community. It’s obvious that what’s going on [in Paris] is seeping into society and a lot of people are acting on half-truths.”



The 26-year-old actor and comedian said those of his generation struggle as the first to be fully integrated into western society, while still being expected to shoulder responsibility within their own community. “When you are at an age when you are trying to make a choice about your identity, it is even more difficult when you are western, Scottish, Muslim, and how do you cater to all of those?”

Describing the months since the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January as a “dark and emotional time”, he added: “As a Muslim you are expected to have this calm equilibrium, but especially when you are pushed time and time again sometimes you do want to give [the racists] what they want and explode.The older generation don’t always see these tensions.”

He has been unimpressed by media coverage of the Paris attacks. “The destruction in Paris was awful but unfortunately the media has created a brand of what is safe to support, so they romanticise a city like Paris, but with Syria or Palestine there are darker aspects that people don’t want to embrace.

“On social media it’s about how you project who you support. People are doing that by very hollow means like changing their photo to a flag.”

Mohammed Nawaz Ali, 23, a Glasgow grocer, agreed: “On the news apps, you see the first six or seven stories are on Paris, someone who survived, someone who was caught, but there’s a lot happening in other countries, the same number of deaths every single day.”

Leaving the mosque after prayers, he reflected a similar sense of frustration. “We’ve not done anything but now Muslims are being attacked. There was the fire at the mosque in Bishopbriggs [in east Dunbartonshire] and there was something near here. It’s serious.”

The Edinburgh-based campaigner, Talat Yaqoob, echoed this sense of disproportion: “Because I’m Muslim, I feel that I have to condemn quickly, and on behalf of an entire community. No other religious group has that asked of them.”



After reports of an incident in London when a woman wearing a hijab was allegedly pushed towards an oncoming tube train, Yaqoob, 30, said Muslim women were tagging her on Facebook telling her to be careful in public. “It’s interesting to see the creation of fear and how it travels,” she said. “The same thing happens every time there’s a terrorist attack.”

Areeb Ullah, 23, a student at King’s College London, said he had to overcome his own reluctance to speak. “There is a massive paranoia now, there is an element of self-censorship, ie being afraid to politically speak up, being afraid to say one thing or another on the basis of being ostracised as a result of it,” he said.

“For the last 15 years we’ve been condemning attacks, we’ve been saying Islam is a religion of peace, Islam is this, Islam is that, but I’ve just come to the point where I don’t even bother making a status [update] about it. It’s like, what is the point? You should know where I stand.”

Another King’s student, Chawahir Yusuf, said as a hijab-wearing woman she felt more visible than before. “When I get on the train I’m like, oh shit do they think I’m going to … do they think I’m one of them?”

Maryyum Mehmood, a PhD researcher who is studying people’s responses to being negatively stereotyped or stigmatised, said she has found that anti-Muslim hatred peaked following events associated with Islamic extremism. Incidents took various forms, but would often be subtle, such as how people were treated by staff in a shop or cafe, she said. Much of the hostility was communicated via social media.

They forget that you’re a Muslim when they post things that are quite Islamophobic Jack Khan

Jack Khan, a teacher from south London, said most incidences of anti-Muslim prejudice he faced came through Facebook. Hostility was rarely direct, and often came from people he would otherwise regard as friends. “They forget that you’re a Muslim when they post things that are quite Islamophobic like ‘no more Muslims in this country’, ‘close down mosques’,” he said.

“Those friends who are doing it, they are not evil people. These are ordinary people who will come round your house, they’d help you out, they’d talk to you nicely. But in the back of their mind ... they’re just waiting to say you’re bad.”

Most galling for Khan was the west’s failure to admit its own responsibility for the state of the Middle East, and particularly the role of Tony Blair.

“Until that hypocrisy is dealt with no one should ever ask a Muslim to denounce this war,” Khan said.



