The scenes of Muslims and others flooding the streets to see off the far-right threat are heartwarming and encouraging. We should not concede ground to racists. But the riots are also cries for help that we are religiously bound to address, writes Faisal Bodi.

As a commentator on Muslim affairs, I’m often accused of washing the community’s dirty linen in public or picking our scabs. It’s an occupational hazard that comes with the territory given that most people are innately defensive and don’t take kindly to criticism, even if it is in the wider interest.

But try as I might, there is not much with which to find fault in our community’s response to the anti-Muslim race riots. In all but a handful of instances it has struck the right tone, marked by discipline, patience and restraint, and where necessary, legitimate displays of muscle.

The bar was set last week by the imam of Liverpool’s historic Sheikh Abdullah Quilliam Mosque when, buoyed by cowardly attacks on small and vulnerable Muslim communities in Southport and Hartlepool, far right elements announced that they would be rallying outside the country’s oldest masjid. In a video that went viral, Imam Adam Kelwick reached out to the organisers saying that instead of being confronted by counter protestors they should prepare to be welcomed onto the premises to share burgers and chips.

The message was beautifully disarming in its magnanimity, instantly capturing the moral high ground and showcasing the Quranic imperative to “respond with that which is better”. By the end of the evening, Imam Kelwick literally had a few of the rival protestors eating from the palm of his hand with promises of further dialogue in the days ahead.

Unfortunately, what followed elsewhere at the weekend precluded the replication of his charitable example. Up and down the country, from Teesside to Tamworth, Muslim communities and migrants came under savage attack. Shops were looted and destroyed, mosques targeted, homes and cars vandalised, and innocent Muslims assaulted. The wanton violence posed an immediate threat to life and property and demanded a firmer approach.

The images of Muslims mobilising to defend their mosques have been reassuring and inspiring. Just as the grassroots stepped up to lead the anti-establishment backlash at the recent general election, so it has been rank and file Muslims who have risen up to defend their communities, often over the heads of politically illiterate and authority subservient mosque committees and community leaders. In Preston, where I live, the advice from the Lancashire Council of Mosques and local mosques, adhering to the official city council line, was to steer clear of any rallies and hunker down. Defying them, we called a counter protest that greatly outnumbered the pathetic far right turnout and sent them packing. Our brothers and sisters just down the road in Blackburn, Bolton and Manchester did the same.

So if there is a criticism to be made, it is that the community’s traditional leadership is behind the curve. Only yesterday did UK imams promulgate a letter identifying the causes of the violence and exhorting Muslims to remain loyal to their values in tackling it. By that time, thousands of Muslims everywhere had defied their mosques’ advice to pour onto the streets and challenge the racists.

I attribute their tardiness to a lack of self-confidence and timidity beaten into the community by over two decades of official policy that has sought to delegitimise Islam and problematise Muslims.  But better late than never. They are also guilty of failing to grasp the nature and gravity of the far-right threat and ignorant of how it’s been defeated in the past. Everyone, including even the Daily Mail, knows that this is not an outpouring of native angst over uncontrolled immigration. It is an often organised, Zionist-led attempt to incite anti-Muslim pogroms that has been years in the making, Financed by pro-Israeli groups with the aim of demonising Muslims in order to elicit public support for the Zionist project, the likes of Tommy Robinson have groomed gullible and for the large part economically deprived white people to believe that Muslims are responsible for their condition and a threat to their communities. Their mood music has been amplified and normalised by mainstream media and politicians who have indulged in a race to the bottom, creating an environment of hate in which violence against Muslims is seen as acceptable.

This anti-Muslim racism differs from the pigmentation-based racism that characterised far right discourse and violence in the 1960’s and 1970’s and which was roundly defeated by anti-fascism activists. As a young child growing up in the 1970’s, I remember having to run the gauntlet of skinheads from the nearby high rises every time we went out to play. I recall being chased, caught and beaten up, watching them urinate on my friend, and being thrown on a bonfire, waiting to be torched alive were it not for the intervention of horrified local residents. This is the Britain that the racists want back, where they can attack Muslims with impunity and impose their reign of terror.

The lesson to draw from yesteryears is that confronting them head on is the only way to prevail against the far right, something powerfully portrayed in a recent Channel 4 documentary that should be compulsory viewing for everyone who wants to understand the British anti-racism struggle. They are essentially bullies who will continue to intimidate and terrorise until they get some of their own medicine. Appeasement and indifference only emboldens them. Like whack-a-mole, wherever they raise their head, they must be clobbered back into their holes. That’s not an excuse or invitation to mob vigilantism. Our defence of our communities must be organised, disciplined, and as far as circumstances permit, peaceful and above all faithful to our own values. In that respect, it has been comforting to see the imams who initially cautioned against organised self-defence – Sheikh Asrar Rashid is a prominent example – now leading from the front, guiding and advising the legions of youths protecting our mosques.

The criticism that mobilising our communities to face down the fascists on the streets will only generate negative imagery and reinforce the canard that multiculturalism has failed is unfounded. Just as Israel’s western-sponsored genocide in Gaza las laid bare the white supremacist values underpinning our foreign policy, so has the appalling violence of the far right exposed the real motives of those claiming to be concerned about immigration.  The overwhelming majority of decent, law-abiding Britons can see that and are just as repulsed and horrified as we are. Apart from that, the prospect of non-Muslims from the anti-racist left coming out to defend our communities while we stay at home and twitch our curtains is a politically dangerous surrender of self-agency, not to mention a matter of shame and embarrassment.

Beyond this explosion, which by the grace of Allah I am confident will be beaten back, Muslims have a wider role to play in tackling the conditions that give rise to recrudescent outbreaks of racism by the white working class. We are their neighbours, friends and in some cases even family, even though it might sometimes not feel as such. A good many of them have been conned into thinking that we are the enemy, not opportunist rabble rousers plying foreign and racist agendas or a state that has left their socially and economically ravaged communities to rot. But rather than sneering at them and looking down our noses we must deepen our engagement and nurture stronger ties based on our shared circumstances, experiences and struggles.

To some degree, these disturbances are also cries for help. Listening to some of the rioters’ complaints in recent days, the idea that Muslims and migrants receive preferential treatment is prevalent. This is the voice of envy. When they look at us, they see a reflection of the society they have lost. Their churches are abandoned, our mosques are multiplying; their families are broken, ours are relatively intact and thriving; their businesses are dead, ours are prospering; their neighbourhoods are deserted, ours are full of youth and life; their elderly are abandoned to die in care, ours are pampered by their children. We must disabuse our detractors of the notion spread by racists that our success is built on their backs. As Mark Twain wrote, “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled”. We may have our fair share of dysfunction but for those that care to listen, our spiritually anchored community is a model in which they can find answers to many of their problems.