Eighteen years ago last Friday, London suffered multiple attacks on its public transport system by four British-born Muslims. The bombings killed 52 people and injured more than 700. Coming less than four years after the 9/11 attacks, the events of that day left the UK in total shock. More than most, British Muslim communities failed to understand the implications at the time. There was a sense of collective denial. Fast forward a decade or so and British Muslims had made huge progress. Nothing represented this more than the two London mayoral election victories of the British-Pakistani Sadiq Khan. He became the first elected Muslim mayor of any Western capital — a vital role model demonstrating to British Muslims that they too could rise to the top in 21st-century Britain. However, this does not mean that anti-Pakistani and anti-Muslim prejudice is now dead. Far from it. In fact, in his first election campaign, Conservative opponent Zac Goldsmith was accused of instrumentalizing anti-Muslim attitudes, not least among London’s British Indian communities. But the scale of the abuse was highlighted in devastating fashion in a report last week from the Greater London Authority. Its analysis showed that Khan has received more than 300,000 pieces of “openly racist or racially oriented abuse” on social media since he was elected London mayor. “It can’t be right that one of the consequences of me being the mayor of London and a Muslim in public life is that I have police protection,” he has previously said. Most of the abuse actually came from outside the UK, showing just how international the role of mayor of London has become. The majority came from the US. Terror attacks in Manchester and London Bridge also fueled the abuse of Khan, with many attempting to blame him for the atrocities. Another worry is that 2023 is on course to be the worst year for this since 2020. Khan has received 171.8 percent more abuse so far this year than he had at the same stage of 2022. How come? In part, there has been a huge surge in the amount of abuse emanating from India. Is this a result of the torrent of Islamophobic politics on the subcontinent? The report shows a peak during the 2019 reelection campaign of India’s Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi. But abuse from the UK has also increased. It made up about 75 percent of all racist abuse in the last few years. The challenge is just as much a domestic one. Note also that newly installed Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf, another British Muslim of Pakistani heritage, has long been on the receiving end of high levels of abuse. It now seems that Khan is being attacked due to a major policy decision on car emissions and air quality. In March, nearly 10 percent of all the racist abuse he received was related to the ultra-low emission zone. Why should an air quality control policy trigger such hatred? The reality is that racism and bigotry have always been there, but an unpopular policy opens up the sewers of hate. But more than half of the abuse emanated from outside London, indicating that this issue is just an excuse for the racists to have a go. It is also a sign of how civilized and reasonable political discourse is a dying art. Or, where it does exist, it attracts zero attention in a world craving retweets and likes. Sadiq Khan has received more than 300,000 pieces of ‘openly racist or racially oriented abuse’ on social media. Chris Doyle Twitter is a major culprit. A quick scan through tweets citing Khan and one finds all sorts. In response to Khan’s measured comments on the anniversary of the London attacks, one tweet fumed: “And it was your kind that did this.” This is just one example of the torrent of abuse launched against Khan, Islam and Muslims, much of it unpublishable in a respectable publication. As the Greater London Authority report highlighted, there were also a host of mentions of “Khanage” and “Londonistan.” The level of abuse is, if anything, underreported. The GLA analysis included only abuse directly and explicitly targeting Khan. It stated: “If we were to widen our search criteria to include other types of abuse, then we’d be looking at much larger numbers (closer to a million messages).” At a time when many are casting their eyes over the new kid on the social media block, Meta’s Threads, what this report does is highlight the continued failure of the major social media platforms to tackle online hate. Many of the tweets attacking Khan should have merited action, such as the accounts being suspended. But this is not just restricted to the social media world. Most of the right-wing press did not bother to cover the report into the racist abuse of Khan. On the contrary, The Daily Telegraph, the major paper of the right, last year falsely alleged that Khan had blocked a statue of the late Queen Elizabeth in Trafalgar Square, leading to another spike in hate. The political class has not helped either. It is hard to find any condemnation of this abuse from right-wing political leaders. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak appears to have said nothing. Even as an ethnic minority PM, he has not backed away from the culture wars that some of his predecessors enjoyed stoking, not least Boris Johnson. If anyone needs a contemporary reminder of the dangers of not tackling anti-Muslim hate, check out the mass riots in France following the murder of a 17-year-old French-Algerian boy last month. This new report only pinpoints a small slice of the abuse directed at one man. Khan may be a magnet for hate owing to his role, but 6 million other British Muslims face such bigotry day in, day out. For them, none of this came as a shock. • Chris Doyle is director of the London-based Council for Arab-British Understanding. He has worked with the council since 1993 after graduating with a first-class honors degree in Arabic and Islamic Studies at Exeter University. He has organized and accompanied numerous British parliamentary delegations to Arab countries. Twitter: @Doylech