[Want even more content from FPM? Sign up for FPM+ to unlock exclusive series, virtual town-halls with our authors, and more—now for just $3.99/month. Click here to sign up.]

A week ago Britain commemorated the 20^th anniversary of the notorious 7/7 suicide bombings in London, carried out by four jihadists, who murdered 52 commuters and wounded over 700. I recently reviewed the new Netflix docuseries Attack on London, which revisited the attacks and the subsequent investigations; I also reported on Islamophilic Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s official statement decrying “those who try to divide us” but whitewashing the bombers’ religious motivation; indeed, by “those who try to divide us,” Starmer could just as easily be referring not to the terrorists but to the UK patriots who have the nerve to protest the mass Muslim migration that is erasing British identity and breaking down British society. After all, the authorities there pursue “Islamophobic” tweets today as vigorously as they investigated the bombings 20 years ago.

A week later the UK’s Left-wing Guardian has published a report even more tone-deaf and offensive than Starmer’s statement. “‘We are in a dangerous place’: British Muslims on the fallout from 7/7 attack 20 years on,” by reporter and feature writer Geneva Abdul, is a long lament that for “many” in the British Muslim community – we’re not told how many – the 7/7 atrocity has imposed an “additional, silent layer of suffering” above and beyond what non-Muslims suffered: “guilt and the need to justify their sense of belonging.”

“Twenty years on,” Abdul writes, “feelings of suspicion, isolation and hostility experienced in the aftermath of the attacks have, for some, only worsened after decades of UK counter-terrorism policies, and a political landscape they say has allowed Islamophobia to flourish.”

Islamophobia is allowed to flourish in England? What alternate universe does the Guardian occupy?

“The emotional and social toll of 7/7 on Muslim communities was profound and is felt by many to this day,” said imam Qari Asim, who mourns that after the bombings he had to stop carrying a backpack when he traveled. Gee, that’s quite the emotional and social toll – the survivors themselves lost only loved ones and limbs in the blasts, and British society as a whole lost its innocence about Islamic jihad in the way America did on 9/11.

“Islamophobia has consistently increased in the last 20 years, and that’s not just due to extremism and terrorism but also a multitude of factors,” Asim claimed. Among those factors, he said, were Tony Blair’s counter-terrorism policies implemented after the bombings, which left “many” in the Muslim community – again, we’re not told how many – “feeling alienated, over-policed and that their faith had been weaponized against them.”

How about this for an alternative viewpoint: the 7/7 attacks were a stark, devastating example of the Muslim faith being weaponized against innocent British citizens. If Muslims in England resented and continue to resent increased law enforcement scrutiny, you know whom they should be blaming? Their co-religionists who set off the bombs in the Tube and on London buses which slaughtered 52, maimed hundreds, and traumatized countless others whose lives were forever changed simply because they were deemed infidels.

Guardian reporter Abdul complains that in the wake of 7/7, “dozens of terrorism charges were brought every year, and conviction rates on those charges soared.” Her suggestion here is that charges and convictions were soaring due to official panic and over-aggressive policing; she doesn’t allow for the possibility that charges and convictions soared because of an actual rise in terrorist threats and activity.

Shabna Begum, chief executive of the Runnymede Trust, a race equality think tank, expressed concern to the Guardian about the increased counter-terrorism measures because of their supposed “disproportionate impact on people of colour – particularly South Asian and Muslim communities.” Begum said, “Muslim communities have generally faced this kind of real culture of both being perceived as a threat and being perceived as outside the main body of who is to be British.”

Again, if the Muslim community in Britain feels perceived as a threat, the blame for that lies not with racist Islamophobes but can be placed squarely at the feet of their co-religionists who openly express a violent hatred of the West and a determination to Islamize England and establish sharia law. That is a conversation no Muslim community anywhere in the West seems willing to have, despite their ceaseless claims of persecution and victimization.

The Guardian article continues: In the years after 7/7, “It’s become commonplace for people to say some really objectionable things [about Muslims] and still be given platforms on mainstream media,” said Jabeer Butt, chief executive of the Race Equality Foundation (how many race equality think tanks are there in London, anyway?). Seriously? That will come as a surprise to all the British commoners who have been visited by, and in some cases arrested by, law enforcement squads cracking down on “hate speech” online – i.e., tweets about Islam that made an unspecified number of anonymous complainants feel “uncomfortable” or “unsafe.”

Meanwhile Muslim mobs marching through London streets chanting genocidal, pro-Hamas slogans are physically protected by British law enforcement, who clear the sidewalks of anyone who “looks Jewish” or troublemakers who defend Zionism.

“We’ve given permission for people to say some terrible things in public and for them not to be challenged under the guise that we’re protecting free speech,” Butt continued, “when what we’re actually doing is demonizing whole swathes of our society.” Seriously? That will come as a surprise to the aforementioned Brits targeted for mean tweets and to UK patriots like Tommy Robinson, who has been demonized more than any Muslim and was thrown into solitary confinement simply for demanding that action be taken regarding the outrageous Pakistani “grooming gang” scandal, which British authorities have swept under the rug for years to avoid charges of racism or – heaven forbid – “Islamophobia.”

Was there ever a calculatedly manufactured neologism more patently false and effectively weaponized than “Islamophobia”? As if demonstrably rational concerns about Islamic terrorism, the spread of violent no-go zones under sharia law, surging sexual assaults and skyrocketing antisemitism from unassimilated masses of military-age male migrants, and the Islamization of European culture constitute an “irrational fear” of Islam.

Shaista Gohir, chief executive of Muslim Women’s Network UK, told the Guardian that “she has never been as worried as she was now for the Muslim community.” She needn’t be, because she and her fellow Muslims have the full force of the British government elites like Starmer, the recently knighted London Mayor Saddiq Khan, and even King Charles III in their corner, while everyday Brits are treated to contemptuous crowd control and the totalitarian silencing of their legitimate frustration.

Meanwhile, as political commentator Matt Goodwin notes on his Substack, Britain is projected to experience “the sharpest increase in the number of Muslims in all of Europe,” according to a Pew poll: “By 2030, Muslims are expected to make up 8.2% of the U.K.’s population, up from 4.6% in 2010.”

Goodwin observes,

A country which is already, visibly struggling with multiculturalism will continue to witness a rapid proliferation of cultural and tribal identities, religions, practices, values, and ways of life —all of which will heap more pressure on a fraying social contract, in which police, schools, councils and other institutions are already struggling to manage and make sense of the tribal and religious practices and conflicts which are now being imported into Britain.

If England is in “a dangerous place,” as the Guardian headline put it – and it is – it is not the fault of a rising tide of bigotry but of an elite class of multiculturalists hell-bent on “decolonizing” and de-Christianizing England’s indigenous culture – the British people be damned.

Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior