Muslims in UK facing 'dystopian' climate, says head of trust

Islamophobia has become "brutally divisive" in the UK and failure to challenge its root causes will lead to more racist riots, the head of the UK's leading race equality thinktank has said.

- Aamna Mohdin

Shabna Begum, who became the chief executive of the Runnymede Trust earlier this year, said the country was entering a new phase in how it talks about Muslims.

"Sayeeda Warsi coined the term 'the dinner table test', but I think we've got even beyond that," she said. "The way politicians talk about Muslims now is so derogatory, it's in the most brutally divisive terms."

She said that unless something changed in political rhetoric and policy, last summer's riots would happen again. "[The riots were] the ugliest representation of the years of racism that have been manufactured through the political media conversation. And if we don't do something differently, that won't be a one-off, and that ugliness will become just a regular feature of our politics."