How bad is the anti-Muslim backlash in London?

When off-duty soldier Lee Rigby was hacked to death in broad daylight last week in the Woolwich district of London, Britons were very understandably shocked and horrified.

The two suspects, Michael Adebolajo, 28, and Michael Adebowale, 22, are British citizens of Nigerian descent. They are also Muslims.

That last fact has sparked a wave of anti-Muslim sentiment in London and all around Britain. A new YouGov poll shows that the number of Britons who believe "British Muslims pose a serious threat to democracy" jumped to 34 percent after the killing, up from 30 percent in November. The poll also found that nearly two-thirds of people in the U.K. believe that a "clash of civilizations" is coming between British Muslims and white Britons, up 9 percentage points from last year.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

How has that attitude affected British Muslims? Here is what they have had to face so far:

The fire-bombing of a mosque

On Sunday, Diler Gharib, chairman of the Grimsby Islamic Cultural Centre, told the Grimsby Telegraph that he and other worshippers were praying at their mosque in the town of Grimsby when it was fire-bombed:

CCTV footage confirms that three fire-bombs were thrown over the complex's gate, according to The Guardian. The mosque's imam, Ahmad Sabik, referred to it as an attempted murder.

There have been a total of 10 attacks on mosques throughout the country since last week's Woolwich murder, reports The Independent.

Protests in the streets

Around a thousand supporters of the right-wing English Defence League (EDL) marched through London on Monday chanting things like "Muslim killers, off our streets." The crowd gathered outside of British Prime Minister David Cameron's home and, according to Reuters, yelled anti-Islam obscenities.

Members of the EDL were also active hours after the attack in Woolwich, The Guardian reports, with members throwing bottles at the police and chanting anti-Islam slogans. The group's leader, Tommy Robinson, expressed his group's opinion on the world's second largest religion:

Around 1,500 members of the EDL also marched in the northern English city of Newcastle, which resulted in 24 arrests for public drunkenness, vandalism, and handing out racist literature, according to the Associated Press.

Reports of anti-Muslim incidents rise dramatically

Fiyaz Mughal, director of interfaith non-profit Faith Matters, said his group received 162 calls in the two days after the Woolwich attack from people who said they were the victims of anti-Muslim incidents. On a normal day, the group receives around five complaints.

Mughal, a former army officer, explained how bad the problem was to the BBC:

The incidents include verbal harassment, graffiti and attacks on mosques, and people pulling off women's headscarves, Mughal said.