Man on racist rampage threatened to ‘blow up’ British Muslim family on crowded bus

A man on a racist rampage on a crowded bus in Newcastle in northern England told a Muslim passenger he was going to “blow her and her family up,” UK Islamophobia watchdog Tell MAMA reported on Thursday.

The man, described as white and in his fifties, targeted a number of passengers with more racist abuse, including spitting at a black woman, using the N-word and calling the Muslim woman, who is South Asian, a “P*ki”.

Despite passengers’ demands for the man’s removal from the bus, the driver said the man was just “drunk”, and let him stay on despite being instructed via radio to pull over.

A police investigation into the February 24 attack is ongoing, according to Tell MAMA.

The group pointed out that anti-Muslim abuse and Islamophobia “harms the mobility of Muslim women, notably in public areas, accessing goods and services, and when using public transport.” 

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According to the group’s previous findings, one fifth of incidents occur on public transport.

Islamophobia in the UK has risen sharply since the 2017 terror attacks in London and Manchester, according to the Muslim News.

Last December, a 40-year-old woman was let off with a caution after strangling a Muslim schoolgirl with her headscarf while on a bus in Sheffield.

In its 2018 report, Tell MAMA identified two significant spikes of anti-Muslim hate crimes in the country. The first occured after ‘Punish a Muslim Day’ letters sent were sent to Muslim homes, institutions, and places of work in March of that year.

A second and more significant uptick occurred in August after then-forign secretary and current Prime Minister Boris Johnson wrote a newspaper column referring to veiled Muslim women as ‘letterboxes’ and ‘bank-robbers’. In the week following his article, anti-Muslim incidents increased by 375 percent.

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