I’ve been speaking to Muslims across the country, many of whom are deserting Labour. They are as angry about potholes, traffic and litter as anyone else

• Taj Ali’s Guardian documentary, The Muslim Vote: Democratic threat or Islamophobic myth? | On the Ground, is out on Thursday 30 April

‘An establishment whitewash … a blooming disgrace. And I promise you that our democracy is not in a healthy state.” Nigel Farage was furious. Not just because the Reform UK candidate, Matthew Goodwin, had lost to the Green party’s Hannah Spencer in the Gorton and Denton byelection, but because a month on, after an official investigation, Greater Manchester police concluded there was no evidence of “family voting”.

The term family voting – a form of electoral fraud that refers to family members conferring, colluding or directing each other in the voting booth – seemed to come out of nowhere the day after that byelection result, circulating rapidly through the British political conversation before disappearing again. It became a talking point because the election observer group Democracy Volunteers raised concerns, saying it saw it happening in 15 of the 22 polling stations it observed. In the end, the police said they found “no evidence of any intent to influence or refrain any person from voting”.

Taj Ali is a journalist and historian. His book, Come What May, We’re Here to Stay: The Story of South Asian Resistance in Britain, is published in September. His Guardian documentary, The Muslim Vote: Democratic threat or Islamophobic myth? | On the Ground, is out on Thursday 30 April

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EU leaders have normalised once fringe racist narratives in their migration, border control and even foreign policies

For years, Viktor Orbán, with his anti-migrant and white Christian nationalist rhetoric – sentiments that endeared him to Donald Trump and his Maga base – offered his European counterparts the comforting fiction that racism in the EU was the preserve of a few unsavoury men and women. Unfortunately, it isn’t that simple.

Racism is not the work of one individual. It is structural. Racial logic is woven into our laws as well as our political, economic and social systems. It shapes access to jobs, housing, education and justice. It informs policing practices, border controls and foreign policy choices. Racialised biases are being stamped into our AI tools. A major scandal in the Netherlands arose because algorithms used to process childcare benefits wrongly flagged thousands of Dutch parents as fraudsters. A form of racial profiling left ethnic minority or migrant heritage families disproportionately impacted. The victims suffered devastating consequences including severe debt, forced evictions and wrongful prison terms and many are still struggling to recover.

Shada Islam is a Brussels-based commentator on EU affairs. She runs New Horizons Project, a strategy, analysis and advisory company

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John Ashby, who subjected woman to prolonged assault in her home, a ‘deeply unpleasant racist’, says judge

A white man “filled with hatred” has been jailed for life after racially abusing a Sikh woman as he raped her.

John Ashby, 32, followed the woman home after spotting her on a bus in Walsall, West Midlands, in October last year, and subjected her to a 24-minute ordeal after breaking in armed with a metre-long stick.

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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