- The Unity House Community Hub was firebombed in the early hours of Thursday.
- The Worcester Muslim Welfare Association said the attack caused “enormous distress across our community.”
The building, located next to a new mosque known as the Unity House Community Hub on Stanley Road, was firebombed in the early hours of Thursday.
The Worcester Muslim Welfare Association (WMWA) released a statement on Thursday:
“We cannot and will not view it in isolation,” the statement said, noting that the attack came during Ramadan and shortly after the recent, deeply disturbing attack on a mosque in Manchester.
“We believe this to be a racially and religiously motivated Islamophobic act of hatred.”
Video clips circulating on social media show CCTV footage of a man setting a fire near the building before running away as flames spread. Several petrol cans were found around the Centre.
The group added that the incident has been reported to West Mercia Police and has caused “enormous distress across our community.”
In Manchester, police arrested one man and were searching for another on Wednesday. Both are believed to have carried weapons, including an axe and a knife, into the Manchester Central Mosque during Tarawih prayers. There were approximately 2,000 worshippers inside at the time.
Chief constable John Webster stated that one of the suspects “had reportedly claimed to be in the mosque to do work on the building, but staff had no knowledge of this.
Hammad Khan, a spokesperson for the mosque, said he could not understand why the police were not classing the incident as terror-related.
He said: “The information I have from people who dealt with the incident leads me to believe that this was potentially a very serious incident”
The Chancellor and Home Secretary announced more funding for protecting mosques this week.
The Far-right are planning a march in London on Saturday 28th. National Demo have organised a counter protest against the Far-right and Islamophobia.
In 2024, Tell MAMA recorded 6,313 anti-Muslim hate cases, the highest total since it began monitoring; a 43% increase on the previous year, with physical assaults up 73 % and threatening behaviour up 328 %, as well as disproportionate targeting of visibly Muslim people in public life. The organisation’s director has warned that far-right ideologies and misinformation, including conspiracy theories like the “Great Replacement”, have fuelled these increases by normalising hostility and even online coordination of tactics to harass and attack Muslim communities.
