I refuse to use the phrases “anti-immigration riots”, “violent disorder”, “disruptions” or “unrest” to describe what people who look like me have been experiencing in Belfast over the last few days. And this is not the first time we have lived through this.

A quick Google search shows that a Pogrom is “a violent, organised riot or mob attack directed against a specific ethnic, religious, or minority group. It typically involves mass killing, physical harm, and the looting or destruction of homes and businesses”.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland said in a statement about the Belfast pogroms that “a number of families, including a parent carrying their two-month-old baby, left their homes during the height of the disturbances”. 

Again, this terrorising has been referred to as mere “disturbances”. For me, a disturbance is a crying baby on a plane, an early morning fire alarm, a delayed train, or spilled coffee. “Disturbance” is such a gentle word, and yet that’s all that so many people are calling these pogroms.

But I can assure you, that if it was instead Muslims, or any other religious or ethnic minorities, that were setting fire to people’s homes and cars, smashing windows with sledgehammers, kicking down doors asking to get the “foreigners” out, inducing fear in mothers, and forcing them to evacuate their homes with their young babies in their arms, nobody would call this violence a mere “unrest” or “disturbance”. 

The collective punishment, violence, and abuse that Muslims and black and brown ethnic minorities experience as a result of the crimes of one individual who happens to share their ethnic background is something that white and white-passing people never have to worry about. 

Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said that “it is clear that people were targeted last night because of their background and I will not tolerate it”. However, I am yet to read about any COBRA meeting, any multi-million pound task force to dismantle anti-Muslim hostility, or any extra security provided to mosques, Muslim schools and businesses. 

I am yet to read the widespread condemnation and statements of sorrow and outrage from white non-Muslim public figures across the political spectrum. Some may remind me that Reform MP Richard Tice called the pogroms “unacceptable”. Yes, he did, as if Reform Party leader Nigel Farage didn’t call for “pure cold rage” only a week before in response to the murder of 18 year-old Henry Nowak. What could he have otherwise possibly expected “pure cold rage” to look like?

I am yet to read about the emergency terror legislation, or see 24/7 media coverage on the pogroms. Instead, when questioned on “riots”, GB News presenter Beverley Turner repeatedly denied a “riot” even happened.

I am yet to read the think pieces about how Muslims are living in fear, have stopped sending their children to school, and are suffering from mental health issues as a result. Mothers are knocking on their neighbours’ – who are often strangers – doors, pleading with them to take their children in, because they know their own house is not safe and is likely to be attacked. I am yet to read think pieces on how far-right thuggery is linked to religion, culture, a foreign conflict or an anti-British lifestyle.

I saw rightful outrage for the burning of Jewish Hatzola ambulances in North London. I saw so much outrage directed at Palestine Action ‘Filton 4’ protesters for vandalising a weapons factory known for providing arms to the Israeli state. Their act of protest was and is still being treated as “terrorism”. All the while in Belfast, homes, shops, and cars are being set alight, vandalised, and firebombed like during the ‘Paki-bashing’ of the 1970s and the 1980s, exactly like the summer of 2024, and now in this very moment as I write. I’ve read comments under videos of mothers crying and fleeing to safety, that said “see these parasites run” and “run back home”.

In this article, I refuse to ignore the fact that whilst black and brown people are being burnt out of their homes, Tommy Robinson and Laurence Fox are still invited to the Oxford Union. As a Muslim, I am sickened and ashamed that of all people, a Muslim has invited them. I pray that one day, the terrified Muslim mothers, and their children who were absent from school, and who woke up from their beds seeing their houses up in flames, can one day look at those who chose to invite them, and those who support the invites, of Tommy Robinson and Laurence Fox, in the eye and testify the crimes committed against them because of the rhetoric spread by the far-right. 

It was Robinson who stated that “the whole of the United Kingdom is hitting the streets tonight at 7pm following yet another invader attack on our people”, to which hundreds, including some as young as 10, heeded to his call.

In a statement, the President of the Oxford Union Arwa Elrayess has defended the invitations, stating: “If we don’t challenge these ideas, there will be consequences. Muslims want to see him debated. and we should be able to tell him he is wrong.”

This was said weeks after the Oxford Islamic society issued a statement against the invite. So please, hear it again from a Muslim now: no, myself and all the British Muslims that I have spoken to, both in Oxford and beyond, do not want to see him debated. We do not want to see him at all. And we feel no need to tell him he is wrong, because we are under no obligation to defend ourselves or our faith to him, especially when we are facing pogroms.

People who took part in these acts of terror in Belfast not only wished death upon us and our children, but acted upon it. 

How dare our media call this anything but a pogrom? How dare anyone dismiss our fears and lived experiences by pretending that such violence is not happening? And how dare the Oxford Union invite those who called for people to “hit the streets” against us? It should not be difficult to understand how these invitations further amplifies and encourages them to repeat their views, not least by providing them a prestigious platform to argue that the West should be “suspicious of Islam”.