Damien Sanders

Two Muslim men pulled an elderly couple and their grandson from a burning house in Leeds last Friday. You probably didn’t hear about it. Mohsin Qayyum. 22. Mohammed Yusuf Iqbal. 20. Both from Bradford. They drove past the garden. They saw the fire. They ran straight in. Sheila Robinson, the grandmother who was trapped inside, posted on social media: "My family and I will be forever grateful to these young men." Her granddaughter Kayla wrote: "Drove past the garden, seen it, and ran straight in and made sure everyone was okay without a second thought." Everyone got out. The house can be replaced. The family is alive. Every outlet that covered it called them heroes. They deserved every word. But not one headline told you they were Muslim men. We have seen this before. Two weeks ago, a teacher was stabbed in the neck protecting his pupils from a knife in his Manchester classroom. Maysum Abdullah. 27. Science teacher. LBC named him a hero. So did the Independent, the Manchester Evening News, the Mirror, the Sun. He ran towards the blade. A hero in every paper. A Muslim man in none of them. This is the pattern. When a Muslim name appears in a crime, the faith leads the headline. When a Muslim name appears in a rescue, it vanishes from the page. Now look at who that erasure clears the path for. Bradford, the same district these men come from, is now led by Reform as its largest party. One of their candidates, Daniel Devaney, topped the poll in his ward after writing on Facebook that Muslims were "pure scum" and that he wanted to "blast [them] off the face of the earth." He was not deselected. He was not suspended. He was elected. They are loud about our religion when they want to call it a threat. They are silent when that same religion sends two young men running into a fire. The book they want to criticise is the same book that commands us to save a life. "Whoever saves one life, it is as if he had saved all of mankind." — Qur'an 5:32 Qayyum and Iqbal lived that verse on a Friday in Leeds. Abdullah lived it in a Manchester classroom. And the headlines recorded the act, but erased the faith that drove it. When we are the suspect, our religion is the whole story. When we are the rescuer, it is not worth a line. Their names are Maysum Abdullah, Mohsin Qayyum, and Mohammed Yusuf Iqbal. Muslim men. Say both. Sources first comment. Report: Islamophobiauk.co.uk Keep us alive: ko-fi.com/islamophobiauk Substack: lnkd.in/d3zKbXbz IG: @islamophobiauk