Amid rising antisemitism and anti-muslim bigotry, community and faith leaders are stressing the need for unity

Maurice Ostro, founder patron of the Faiths Forum for London, has been engaged in interfaith work for decades. For much of that time, he said, he was teased by good-natured people who insisted there was little need for it in the UK.

“People used to laugh at me for doing this work,” he said, but now, amid record-breaking incidents of antisemitism and anti-muslim hatred, the jokes have stopped.

Muslim Council of Britain under Wajid Akhter wants to replicate Zohran Mamdani’s grassroots voting drive

Zohran Mamdani’s victory to become New York’s first Muslim mayor took place thousands of miles from the UK. But at the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), the campaign was being closely studied.

“We actually spent some time with his campaign team to work out what the secret sauce was,” said Dr Wajid Akhter, who took over as secretary general of Britain’s largest and most diverse national Muslim umbrella body last year.

Time Hoppers: The Silk Road is a time-travel adventure whose child heroes must save the legacy of Islamic scholars who shaped modern science. Its makers reveal their inspiration, and reflect on their success

‘Some people said it doesn’t exist – that it’s a fantasy.” So says Flordeliza Dayrit of the silk road, the vast network of trade routes that once connected Asia, Africa and Europe – and the starting location for Time Hoppers: The Silk Road, the animated feature she co-created with her husband, Michael Milo.

Speaking from their home in Edmonton, Canada, the couple describe a project that started with personal intrigue and grew into something far more ambitious. With its theatrical release in UK cinemas, Time Hoppers turns this sense of curiosity into a fast-moving children’s adventure: a story in which four young protagonists travel back in time to the medieval Islamic world, meeting the scientists and scholars whose discoveries shape our current everyday lives.

Exclusive: Home secretary understood to have withdrawn authorisation for speaker at Unite the Kingdom rally in May

A US-based anti-Islam influencer who had been authorised to attend a far-right rally in London has been blocked from entering the UK by the home secretary.

Valentina Gomez, a self-styled Maga influencer, was given permission last week to enter via a UK electronic travel authorisation (ETA).

Religious and community leaders are urging the Australian government to take a harder stance on Israel as it continues to bombard Lebanon

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When Dr Saad Ramadan’s elderly parents and five siblings fled their village in southern Lebanon under raining Israeli strikes for Beirut, he thought they were evacuating to safety.

But safe has become “a relative word” these days, he says.

Christian nationalism has as little to do with the true values of Christianity as national socialism has to do with the values of socialism, says Rev Prof Nick Ross

Thank you for your editorial on the religious right (The Guardian view on Britain’s religious right: using and abusing faith in the pursuit of power, 5 April). The truth is that Christian nationalism has as little to do with the true values of Christianity as national socialism has to do with the values of socialism. It is a perversion of the faith … almost an oxymoron in its combination of opposites.

I serve in a church in the heart of Smethwick in the West Midlands, where our congregation reflects the area, being made up of those born and bred in the area, the families of the Windrush generation and new immigrants and asylum seekers from Africa and Asia.

Heated discourse over Israel and influencer Hasan Piker has created cracks between progressive and establishment Democratic candidates in key swing state

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A heated debate over criticism of Israel and the political influencer Hasan Piker’s role on the left has bitterly divided progressive and establishment Democrats in a US Senate race in Michigan, an electorally critical swing state. The ongoing controversy likely marks a preview of things to come as the midterm and 2028 election seasons ramp up, and it is drawing warnings from Arab American leaders in a state where the party’s Israel policy badly damaged Kamala Harris’s campaign.

Mallory McMorrow, a state senator favored by much of the establishment, is locked in a tight three-way race with the progressive Abdul El-Sayed, and Haley Stevens, the US representative who is backed by Aipac. El-Sayed and Piker last week announced plans to rally together. In response, McMorrow, the Anti-Defamation League, the Trump administration, Third Way, Senator Elissa Slotkin and other pro-Israel figures went on the offensive, labeling Piker as antisemitic and seeking to tar El-Sayed over his association with him.

A professed desire to protect the country’s Christian identity is cover for a divisive politics which ignores the central message of the gospels

In an interview conducted a few days after the beginning of Lent, Reform UK’s Muslim home affairs spokesperson, Zia Yusuf, outlined a new policy to prevent churches being converted to mosques. This was an “incendiary” issue relating to Christian heritage, Mr Yusuf claimed, which was causing anxiety across the United Kingdom.

Subsequent analysis by the Times – which conducted the interview – concluded that instances of churches becoming mosques were in fact extremely rare, adding up to less than 0.09% of the 47,000 churches active in the 1960s. Mr Yusuf’s solution to this alleged crisis – which involved granting automatic listed status to churches, and changing planning laws to restrict change of use – was also widely questioned. For many churches struggling to fund repairs through the contributions of thinned-out congregations, the onerous bureaucratic obstacles posed by listed status would only be another expensive headache.

As Israel expands its invasion of southern Lebanon, people are having to bury their dead in temporary graves

In Lebanon, the dead are usually given one last glimpse of their home town before they are laid to rest. Hoisted high above the heads of the living, their casket is slowly marched through the streets where they grew up.

It is the hands of their loved ones that guide them into their final resting place, already dug, and gently sprinkle dirt on their body.

Attorneys for Salah Sarsour, a Palestinian-born US green card holder, say he was targeted for criticizing Israel

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The president of Wisconsin’s largest mosque was detained by federal immigration agents, drawing accusations from local officials and religious leaders that the arrest was motivated by his statements against Israel.

Salah Sarsour, a Palestinian-born legal permanent resident of the United States, was taken into custody by nearly a dozen US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on Monday in Milwaukee after he left his home, according to the Islamic Society of Milwaukee.

The former PM has no valid response when progressives raise a voice over war crimes, so he seeks to mute them. But we’ll take no moral lectures from him

The left, claims Tony Blair, has forged an “alliance with Islamists”. He goes further: this is simply the latest mutation of antisemitism. Extraordinary accusations require extraordinary evidence. Yet unlike with his illegal war on Iraq, our former prime minister has not even troubled himself to assemble a dodgy dossier.

This latest tirade was published by the Free Press, a woke-bashing, pro-Israel publication founded by journalist Bari Weiss, now accused of pro-Trump censorship in her new role as editor-in-chief of CBS News. The substance of Blair’s charge is what he calls “opposition to Israel”. This has become an increasingly familiar allegation. As the popularity of the Green party of England and Wales surges, its opposition to Israel’s genocide is recast as sectarianism.

Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist

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Jude Chehab turns the camera on the maelstrom – and slow liberation – after her mother’s expulsion from controversial group al-Qubaysiat

Opening the Pandora’s box of her family secrets, Jude Chehab makes a complex and moving documentary debut that unfolds both as an investigation and as a kind of intergenerational therapy. For decades, her mother, Hiba, was devoted to al-Qubaysiat, a highly secretive female Muslim order that operates in Lebanon and Syria. Chehab’s grandmother Doria had also been a follower, and the film-maker herself was initiated into the group as a young girl. For the two older women, this all-female religious movement inspired feelings of solidarity and freedom, yet al-Qubaysiat also demanded absolute submission to the leader, known to followers as the Anisa, or the Teacher. And when Hiba was expelled for unclear transgressions, her world fell apart.

In contrast to other documentaries on controversial organisations, Chehab’s film doesn’t sensationalise the tactics of indoctrination. In fact, information about the group only comes in bits and pieces, as revealed by Hiba and Doria. This storytelling choice lifts the focus away from the unseen but powerful Anisa, focusing instead on the emotional maelstrom endured by Hiba and the rest of Chehab’s family. Chehab might have thought of her camera as a potent tool for catharsis, yet when she urged her father to speak on the al-Qubaysiat, his answers were not as scathing as she had hoped, as if he had gone off an imaginary script.

His novel was praised for giving a voice to the victims of Algeria’s brutal civil war. But one woman has accused Kamel Daoud of having stolen her story – and the ensuing legal battle has become about much more than literary ethics

By Madeleine Schwartz. Read by Kate Handford

A series of shocking incidents and rising anti-Muslim rhetoric – including from One Nation’s Pauline Hanson – has sharpened concerns for the Islamic community

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Behind the counter of his family’s kebab shop in Brisbane’s south, Burak was lathering garlic sauce on a customer’s falafel wrap when they began talking about Pauline Hanson.

Burak, a 17-year-old school student, had never heard of Hanson – one of Australia’s most polarising political figures, who entered federal parliament almost three decades ago in 1996.

Andy Ogles’ election victories in Tennessee are a product of an electoral system broken by gerrymandering

Andy Ogles represents more Muslims than any other Tennessee congressman. Yet he has no interest in representing them. He doesn’t even want them in the country.

“Muslims don’t belong in American society,” the third-term Republican wrote on Twitter/X last week. He’s proudly doubled down on his incendiary statement, which joins a long list of Islamophobic beliefs. During last year’s New York City mayoral campaign, Ogles called Zohran Mamdani “a communist who has publicly embraced a terroristic ideology”. The US naturalization system, he said, required “any alignments with communism or terrorist activities to be disclosed. I’m doubtful he disclosed them. If this is confirmed, put him on the first flight back to Uganda.”

Former Kilmore church being converted into mosque set alight Tuesday amid spate of Islamophobic incidents

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Islamic communities have called out a rise in “anti-Muslim hate” after a church that was being converted into a mosque was allegedly set alight in what Victoria police are treating as a “suspicious” fire.

In a statement, Victoria police said the abandoned church in Kilmore, north of Melbourne, was set alight at about 1.50pm on Tuesday, causing “significant damage” to the building. No one was inside at the time and the fire was believed to have been started in the rear of the building.

Readers respond to negative comments by Conservative and Reform UK politicians following a Ramadan event in Trafalgar Square

As a young British Muslim, I was troubled to see public prayer described as an “act of domination” by the shadow justice secretary, Nick Timothy (Report, 19 March). To characterise a few minutes of prayer in this way is simply unjust. Britain stands for fairness and equal treatment. If other faiths can gather in public spaces, Muslims should be afforded the same right. To single out one community undermines that principle.

Events such as open iftars are not about imposing beliefs, but about bringing people together. We are often encouraged to integrate, yet when Muslims do so visibly and peacefully, they are criticised. Such language and behaviour are deepening division and making Young British Muslims feel unwelcome in their own country.
Sarmad Anwar
Bradford, West Yorkshire

Every home is missing someone, every person is carrying grief. We went not to celebrate but to sit with the bereaved

Eid al-Fitr is meant to bring release. It comes at the end of Ramadan, after a month of fasting and prayer, and in Gaza it has always carried its own kind of joy. The day begins with prayer. Men and boys gather in clean clothes, neighbours congratulate one another, friends embrace, and supplications rise with the first light. Families return home for breakfast, then begin the long round of visits to sisters, daughters, aunts, uncles and neighbours. Children wait for eidiya, the money given to younger relatives. Coffee is poured, sweets are shared and doors remain open.

This year, the rituals remained. The feeling had gone.

Shadow justice secretary had called Trafalgar Square event an ‘act of domination’

James Cleverly has said he disagrees with his Conservative frontbench colleague Nick Timothy’s assertion that public Muslim prayers are an act of domination, as another senior Tory called for the party to respect the right to worship.

Kemi Badenoch has defended Timothy, the shadow justice secretary, after he posted images of mass prayer at a Ramadan event on Monday evening in Trafalgar Square, calling it “an act of domination” and “straight from the Islamist playbook”.

Exclusive: Tariq Ahmad says he has raised concerns with party leadership after shadow justice secretary’s remarks

The shadow justice secretary, Nick Timothy, has been accused by a Conservative peer and former counter-extremism minister of “instilling fear” among Muslims with his comments about public prayer.

British Muslims were openly talking about leaving the Conservative party, added Tariq Ahmad, who said he had raised his concerns with the party leadership and expected action to be taken.