In the wake of July’s Nice attack and the attempted coup in Turkey, BBC reports that there was a significant increase in anti-Muslim tweets for the month – 7,000 were recorded vs 2,500 in April.
Carl Miller, a research director from Thinktank Demos, said the tweets were showing an apparent anger at “the wider Muslim world” rather than extremist groups such as ISIS. Twitter said it was “continuing to invest heavily” in preventing abuse on their site.
“Every time a terrorist attack happens, we don’t need to get a bland press release from the mosque around the corner saying we condemn it, that’s not what people want to see,” says Deeyan Khan, the founder of the online magazine Sister-hood. “I think what people don’t know in the West is that the first targets [of extremist attacks] are other Muslims. Muslims have been suffering at the hands of these barbaric groups for decades. Many of us have faced persecution, violence, imprisonment because we have taken on extremists – but that’s not the story that you’re often told.”
