On Monday, 5th April, it was reported that the daughter of a Muslim man is launching a campaign urging the government to adopt an official definition of Islamophobia.
Mohammed Saleem, 82, was murdered in April 2013 by Pavlo Lapshyn, a white supremacist who later planted three bombs outside mosques in Walsall, Wolverhampton and Tipton. Now, Saleem’s daughter Maz Saleem is launching a campaign called #IAmMohammedSaleem to highlight Islamophobic hate crimes and put pressure on the government.
She is urging people to post short videos and testimonies on social media throughout the month of April speaking out against Islamophobia.
The all-party parliamentary group on British Muslims produced a report in 2018 proposing a working definition of Islamophobia/anti-Muslim hatred in 2018 and recommended that this definition be adopted. “Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness and perceived Muslimness,” it said.
Maz Saleem in a statement to The Guardian said, “This was one of the biggest acts of terrorism on UK soil. Yet to this day most people have no idea about this case. Whenever terror-related headlines reach our screens they are often about those who identify with the Muslim faith; rarely do we hear of the merciless violence of white supremacists who took my father’s life.”
