Mosque in Blackburn hit by arson attack, Starmer remains shtum

The Masjid-e-Quwwatul Islam mosque in Blackburn was set on fire last weekend. Keir Starmer, his government and the state-corporate media have been deafeningly silent about the arson attack. It was the latest of countless Islamophobic attacks in the UK.

No ‘COBRA’ meeting. No emergency funding. Not even a word of condemnation from Number 10. ‘Mainstream’ media coverage was limited to a mention in the local press. Google’s search results show only a 2025 arson attack and an article about a separate attack on an Imam’s home:

State contempt

The Muslim Social Justice Initiative (MSJI) pointed out the stark difference in the state machinery’s reaction when Muslims are targeted by violence:

Another mosque in the North has been set on fire. Alhamdulillah, no one was injured.

This comes days after the family home of an Imam in Bolton was firebombed while his loved ones were inside.

Where is the urgency?

The state has spent decades surveilling, criminalising and dehumanising Muslims. It has created the conditions our communities are now being asked to survive.

Muslim communities should not have to continue to beg for care or protection while our mosques and families continue to be targeted.

If your politics oppose state violence, war, policing and empire, then anti-Muslim racism must be central to that struggle. We cannot keep stressing the urgency that is missing.

The Starmer regime only cares about even British Jews when they can be used as an excuse to attack those opposing Israel’s crimes. When Jewish people oppose those crimes too, as they prominently do, the state targets them — and it routinely shows its contempt for Muslims, their rights and their safety.

The Starmer government and the machinery of the British state are fundamentally racist and elbow-deep in murder and colonialism.

Featured image via the Canary