Head of MI5 Ken McCallum warns that extremist anti-immigration and anti-Muslim grievances are “tipping into terrorist intent”.
Tipping into? We are well past that point.
In 2013, Mohammed Saleem was murdered and three mosques were bombed by a far-right terrorist. In 2017, a terrorist drove a van into Muslim worshippers at Finsbury Park, killing Makram Ali. In 2022, Andrew Leak firebombed an immigration centre in Dover in an attack counter-terrorism police linked to extreme-right terrorist ideology.
In June 2025, an explosive device was thrown into Belfast Islamic Centre. In June 2026, five people were injured in suspected anti-Muslim attacks across Edinburgh and Northern Ireland also saw organised racist and Islamophobic violence, homes attacked and set alight, masked checkpoints and healthcare workers intimidated, amid concerns about paramilitary involvement. And then there are the attacks that were prevented. Neo-Nazis stockpiling weapons and plotting attacks on mosques. A teenager in Scotland planning to attack a Muslim centre after befriending its imam to gain access.
How many people have to be murdered, how many mosques attacked, how many families terrorised before we stop talking about this as an emerging threat?
What is long overdue is a response that reflects the scale and seriousness of it.
[ENDS]
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