Murders
British soldier Lee Rigby, brutally murdered by two Islamic fundamentalists on May 22, 2013
The most well-known is the previously mentioned murder of the Lee Rigby by two Islam fundamentalists on May 22nd 2013. The assault was bold and with clearly evident racist underlying motive. The two assailants hit the victim with a car and then dragged him to the curb and cut him with a slicer, a knife, and a machete.
The murderers were two British citizens of Nigerian origin. One of them, twenty-eight-year-old Michael Adebolajo, ordered passers-by to film him on their cell phone cameras right after the murder. Not having washed the blood off his hands and still holding the knife he proclaimed the following: “Eye for eye, tooth for tooth. You think after this David Cameron will come to protect you, think when we arm ourselves he will come to harm? No, the people suffering will be average citizens – you and your children. There will be peace only after the government sends in troops…”
Before police arrived the murderers had spent about 20 minutes talking to the bystanders. One of the eyewitnesses, a nurse named Ingrid Loyau-Kennett, said that Michael Adebolajo forbade her to touch the body, and to her question about the reason of this murder replied that when the victim was a soldier he killed people himself, so his place was in the ground, too.
The police arrived and arrested the criminals. Both resisted arrest and were wounded. They were taken to different hospitals. After that a search was conducted in the murderers’ homes. There was information about possible accomplices to the crime. Both assailants, Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale were sentenced to life in prison. Both of them grew up in Great Britain and were members of a radical Muslim community.
As was mentioned, this murder stirred the entire country and served as a catalyst for multiple anti-Islamic incidents. In some cases the threats were so serious and specific that the police had to mobilise Special Forces in order to protect the mosques. In addition to that, the entire country suffered a wave of anti-Islamic graffiti. A homemade bomb was discovered in the alley next to the Walsall mosque on the 22nd of June. 150 people had to be evacuated from their homes. There was also an outburst of violence against the Muslims.
In April 2013 a Ukrainian student Pavel Lapshin murdered a Muslim - Mohammed Saleem out of religious hatred. Lapshin was also found guilty of attacks on mosques in Wolverhampton and Tipton. During the course of the investigation Pavel Lapshin demonstrated powerful hatred towards all non-white people and confessed to wanting to initiate an “inter-race war”. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison.
In July 2013 a Muslim by the name of Bijan Ebrahimi was killed in Bristol by his neighbour Lee James. Ebrahimi suffered racist abuse from James for an entire year, until in the end James murdered him and set fire to his house. Lee James was sentenced to life imprisonment.
In 2014, there were three deaths related to hate crime. On June 26, it became known that a Muslim woman was killed in Colchester. She was a Saudi Arabia native and had come to Britain to study at the University of Essex.
On August 16, police officers killed a black teenager Ryan Wilson. His parents found out about his death online.
In late November, 2014, member of the LGBT community Nazeem Mahmoud committed suicide after his mother asked him to find a “cure” for his “disease”.
The anti-Ahmadi incident which claimed the most attention was in 2016 the murder of the Ahmadi Muslim Asad Shah by the Barelvi extremist Tanveer Ahmed. However, the anti-Muslim-hate monitoring group TELL MAMA revealed in their publication ‘Sectarianism, Extremism and Hate Crime: The impacts on the Ahmadiyya Community’ that there were 29 anti-Ahmadi incidents throughout 2016 which was a large increase from the nine reported in 2015.
On October 15, 2021, the murder of David Amess occurred. Ali Harby Ali stabbed MP Sir David Amess in the constituency and was sentenced to life imprisonment.
