Arya News - As hatred is increasingly normalised and assaults rise, ethnic minorities are becoming hypervigilant.
Names marked with an asterisk have been changed to protect identities.
London, United Kingdom – “People here are tired, scared and feel forgotten,” says Nabila*, a Muslim mother of two in Basildon, a town in the English county of Essex.
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Nabila has been documenting incidents of racism in Essex, her home county [Courtesy of Nabila] According to the 2021 census, Basildon is 93 percent white, and Muslims make up less than 2 percent of the population. Campaigners have warned that in areas where ethnic minority communities are smaller and more geographically isolated, they face heightened risks, as visibility increases vulnerability.
A single mother working full time, Nabila has been documenting incidents of racism, supporting victims and organising meetings with local authorities.
She said she no longer feels safe in the place she calls home.
After being racially abused while walking through her favourite park, she stopped going there altogether. Women, she said, are increasingly changing their daily routines, constantly watching over their shoulders. Racism now permeates every aspect of their lives, she added.
At a women’s listening circle organised by Nabila in collaboration with the local authority at the Wat Tyler Centre, another Muslim woman, Zarka*, spoke about her experiences as a young mother in Basildon who wears the hijab.
After being told to “take that rag off your head” during the school run by a passer-by, she stopped taking her children to school for two weeks. Beyond verbal abuse, she described the cumulative effect of everyday hostility, from cars failing to stop at zebra crossings and hostile looks from passers-by.
‘I can’t do this any more, Mum.’
Hundreds of miles north, similar experiences are unfolding in Scottish classrooms.
Etka Marwaha’s daughter Anisa was seven when she first experienced racist taunting at her primary school in Glasgow.
Marwaha said Anisa became quiet and withdrawn. She was isolated on the playground and subjected to racial slurs. Months later, she broke down in tears in front of her mother, explaining the abuse she had suffered.
On multiple occasions, Marwaha contacted the school, urging them to take action, even offering her own support on understanding racism. But, she said, they failed in their duty of care, and the extent of the problem was kept hidden.
It went on for two years before Etka felt compelled to take her daughter out of the school.
“The plan was never to move her into a different school,” she told Al Jazeera. “But she was refusing to go to school; she would come home very, very upset. She was isolated.
“She was in tears, saying, “I can’t do this any more, Mum.’ So she made the decision, at that young age, that ‘I want to get out of here."”
The girl’s new school is not in the catchment area, nor is there a direct bus to it, causing further inconvenience. But it has a zero-tolerance approach to racism, and Anisa is happier.
At her new school, Anisa can speak about her experiences of racism and how it made her feel.
The ordeal brought back painful memories for Marwaha’s own experiences at school.
“The racist bullying, for me, started at secondary school. You’d think times have changed, that people have been educated, but I think things have changed for the worse when a seven-year-old can openly make a racist comment and that’s accepted by society, and parents don’t address it.”
Sam*, a doctor in northwest Scotland with dual heritage children, said he has been surprised by the level of racism in local schools.
“There has been a clear normalising of racist jokes and name-calling. Every one of our kids has been affected,” he said. “Perhaps the biggest surprise is how few other students stand up against racism. When I was growing up, if someone was racist, they would be the person being socially excluded. Now, silence. It has forced us to look at moving out of the UK.”
‘Racism is out of control’
In the latest incident of alleged and potentially dangerous racism, a man walked into Manchester Central Mosque on Tuesday, reportedly with an axe and weapons. The man was arrested. There had been 2,000 worshippers in the mosque at the time, for the evening tarawih prayers during Ramadan.
Official figures underline the scale of the problem.
In October 2025, the UK Home Office revealed that the number of hate crimes recorded by police in England and Wales had risen for the first time in three years, including increases in racially and religiously motivated offences.
Religious hate crimes against Muslims rose by 19 percent, with a spike following the Southport murders and subsequent riots in mid-2025, the Home Office said.
The rise comes as hard-right politicians and activists, such as Reform leader Nigel Farage and the Islamophobic activist Tommy Robinson , rail against immigration. According to recent YouGov polling, if a general election were held tomorrow, Reform would lead with 24 percent.
Shabna Begum, head of Runnymede Trust, a race equality think tank, said, “Mainstream political and media actors have played in normalising and enabling racist narratives that have scapegoated migrants, people seeking asylum, Muslims and people of colour generally.”
In a report released last year, How Racism Affects Health, Runnymede highlighted the hypervigilance that people of colour have to operate with in order to guard their safety, and which causes long-term physiological damage, affecting life expectancy and mental health outcomes.
“For those that live in more disparate communities where they show up as minorities in a more visible way, that sense of threat is acute,” said Begum.
School suspensions for racist incidents have more than doubled in recent years, according to UK Department for Education data.
“Children as young as four are being sent home for racist behaviour,” Begum said. “This shows a society where racism is out of control, and that our school systems are failing to deal with the problem.
“They are making calculated decisions about where they will go, what travel routes they will take; withdrawing from regular social and community activities because they can no longer trust that those spaces will be safe for them.”