A vigil after the Finsbury Park attack in 2017

FOUR years ago, I received a phone call.

The panicked voice at the end of the line told me a terror attack had taken place.

Someone had rammed their van into worshippers as they left night prayers at Muslim Welfare House and one of the worshippers was killed.

This was our mosque, our community hub, our space of solace and my workplace, now our sense of serenity shattered by an act of hate.

The days that followed saw a flurry of activity and chaos.

The world’s media camped outside our mosque.

Security was heightened, official visits took place and promises of change were made.

Four years on, we are still waiting for these promises to be fulfilled.

The politicians and media may have moved on, but our community has not.

Makram Ali, who was mowed down in the attack, is still dead.

Makram Ali died after being mowed down

His children are still without a father and those who knew him and prayed beside him still live in fear that an attack like this could take place again and that their names will be the ones written in obituaries.

Our mosque has received endless calls from Muslim women in the area worried about being the victims of hate crimes and we’ve had to put on workshops and therapy sessions to help with the trauma people are experiencing.

Our lives as a community were changed forever, and we’re still feeling the effect of that attack today.

It’s why I was pained and horrified to see such a similar attack take place in Canada where four members of the same family in London, Ontario were recently killed because they were Muslim. Reading about this incident gave me flashbacks to what took place outside our mosque and the unimaginable terror and horror unleashed that day.

Though these attacks took place hundreds of miles apart, the source of this hatred is the same: Islamophobia.

Mohammed Kozbar

Islamophobia is the dark smog we have allowed to descend on our societies.

What was once exclusively the rhetoric of the far right on the fringes of society has now infiltrated the mainstream and has become the acceptable face of racism.

The Islamophobic attacks that took place in Finsbury Park, Ontario, and Christchurch, to name a few, did not arise in a vacuum.

They are the culmination of decades of and institutional Islamo­phobic discourse and racialised policies that have filtered through from the top to our streets.

Islamophobia is not simply surviving, it is thriving, and we put Muslims at risk when we fail to acknowledge the pattern of hate locally and across borders.

Here in the UK, we have a political class that still refuses to acknowledge Islamophobia and take it seriously, and a media that is complicit in spreading negative coverage of Muslims and demonising them.

From London to Jerusalem, from Christchurch to Oslo, the impact of Islamophobia is clear for everyone to see, yet the response to its rise globally has been met with inaction, silence, and in some cases, celebration.

Following the attacks in London, Ontario, prime minister of Canada Justin Trudeau declared that Islamophobia has no place in our communities but despite this, Canada’s Ontario government blocked a motion condemning Islamophobia.

Flowers at the scene

Similarly, leaders of the Conservative Party here in the UK reneged on their promise to carry out a truly independent inquiry on Islamophobia in the party.

And our prime minister still refuses to apologise for several Islamophobic comments he has made.

Let us be clear: Muslims will never be safe from another attack until the issue of Islamophobia is taken seriously and tackled head on.

For us at Finsbury Park Mosque and for many Muslims across the world, another Islamophobic attack taking place is not a case of if, but when.

Though these attacks are intended to cause terror and fear, they also draw out the best in people.

From the courage of Imam Mohammed, who protected the attacker from the anger of those he nearly just killed, to those who sent flowers and cards from across the world to our mosque and Makram’s family, to the hundreds from our local community and beyond that gathered outside our mosque the day after the attack to show their solidarity.

Christchurch and London, Ontario have their heroes and well-wishers too and what these acts of solidarity show is that those who tried to divide us have failed.

I hope other communities around the world do not have to experience what we did in order to come together to fight the scourge of Islamophobia and I hope that govern­ments around the world reflect the actions of their citizens who are calling out in one voice against this evil.