AhlulBayt News Agency (ABNA): An Islamic cultural center in west London was set on fire in what is believed to be an Islamophobic attack, leaving the Muslim community in shock and disbelief.
The Al-Falah institute in Hayes, which is mainly used by women, was ransacked and torched after intruders broke into the center and forced open the donation boxes in the early hours of September 26.
The center said it contacted the police about the break-in but was told that officers were too busy to respond. Later that night, the center's security company alerted the fire services after the CCTV cameras stopped working.
The fire was started by burning copies of the Quran that were gathered in a room, according to staff and community members.
"Our scriptures, handled with the utmost reverence, now lie as burnt remnants," Mariam Tariq, a trustee and chairperson of the center, told Middle East Eye . "The visual is more than just heart-wrenching; it's an assault on our spiritual and communal essence."
The Metropolitan Police said the fire was being treated as arson and that no arrests have been made so far.
The center has launched a GoFundMe page to raise at least $60,000 to rebuild the center. The page said that the attack could not be ruled out as an Islamophobic or a hate crime and that it had not received any media attention.
Zulikha Raja, a trustee at the institute, said that the local community was in mourning following the attack. "Al-Falah wasn't just a structure, it represented our aspirations and dreams," she said.
Anti-Muslim attacks accounted for more than one-third of all religiously motivated hate crimes in the UK between 2022 and 2023, according to Home Office data . A report released in 2022 found that 42 percent of mosques or Islamic institutions had experienced religiously motivated attacks in the previous three years, with vandalism and burglary being the most common forms of attack.
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