‘Burn down their hatred with hope’ – Responding to racist riots in Liverpool

LAST SUNDAY, as part of my training as a Methodist local preacher, I led a service at a Black majority church in inner city Liverpool, about half a mile from a mosque.

I had planned the service the week before, but as I woke to news of protests, riots, violence and destruction in the city the night before, I knew I had to respond somehow.

Protesters burned down a library in the north of the city on Saturday night, after a week of unrest following the shocking attack on a children’s dance class in Southport. The attacker was a teenager inaccurately assumed by anti-immigration protestors to be a Muslim asylum seeker. Three children were killed and many more children and adults were injured.

But how to respond when words failed me?

The previous afternoon I visited a Muslim neighbour to see how she and her family were coping. Her words rang in my ears:

‘The Southport attacker’s family were Christians but you don’t see people attacking churches’.

I looked online for insight, and found inspiration from three sources. First, this post on X from the Church of England bishop of Liverpool:

An Imam who crossed the road to greet the very people who gathered there targeting himself and his mosque (ended up hugging one of them!), and others who came along determined to drive away the troublemakers. This is Liverpool. pic.twitter.com/XaM6uAsr5J

— John Perumbalath (@JPerumbalath) August 3, 2024

Then I read a local news report of an anti-racist demonstration in the city centre the day before. Among the speakers was Adam Kelwick, the imam of Abdullah Quilliam mosque, the first recorded mosque in the UK. His mosque was the scene of a planned protest last Friday evening which was massively outnumbered by anti-racists who gathered. He told the crowd in Liverpool on Saturday:

‘They find these protests as the only outlet for the anger they have. I know this may be difficult with their messages of hate – but just try and see them as a human being like you.’

He added:

‘One of the biggest protesters last night – we embraced each other and took him into the mosque. Maybe he was going to burn our mosque down – but we burtn down their hatred with hope. It’s time for us to sit down, start talking and start listening to each other.’

Finally, a friend had shared on Facebook a prayer for peace across all communities, along with a recording of the Kyrie from the African Sanctus by David Fanshawe, a celebratory and visionary work expressing unity between peoples, their faiths and their music. Fanshawe’s Kyrie combines the traditional Muslim call to prayer with the Western choral harmonies of the Christian prayer to God and Christ for mercy.

I showed the Bishop’s message on the screen in church, including the photo of the imam embracing the protestor. I read the imam’s powerful quote and recalled that Liverpool is a city built by migrants that has witnesses violence and injustice before and has risen again. This was relevant to the neighbourhood surrounding this church, which is mostly known by the wider world because of the Toxteth riots more than forty years ago. I concluded by introducing the Kyrie with a prayer that justice and mercy would prevail as we recognise our shared humanity.

It didn’t feel like much in the face of such a momentous week across the region and the whole country. But in the days since then, a fundraiser to restore the north Liverpool library raised more than £180,000 in three days, and plans for an attack on a charity supporting people seeking refuge and asylum in the city centre were thwarted by hundreds of anti-racist counter protestors surrounding the building. Imam Adam Kelwick, who was also present at this protest, said:

‘it’s a sign that peace has been restored and I am optimistic that this is the end of it now.’

He added:

‘I’ve also been speaking with leaders of the far-right movement, they have broken bread with me, we have had discussions and we all realise that it’s like someone is trying to play us off against each other… We are going to be sitting down and making friends with people on the other side.’

As Seana Roberts, who runs the charity which faced credible threats of violence this week, said on Wednesday:

‘May peaceful protest and an offer of dialogue be the way forward in such difficult days.’