Friday prayers are often seen as the most important event in the weekly calendar for Muslims. But in Rochdale last week, they were more vital than usual. Three days on from the video that shocked the world, many feared the town was teetering on the brink of serious unrest.
The footage showed an armed officer, Taser drawn, forcefully kick the head of a man who lay face down on the ground, already apparently incapacitated, as police responded to reports of an assault at Manchester airport. He then stamped on the man’s head and violently kneed him in the side, as onlookers screamed.
The short clip was met with widespread revulsion and spread quickly across the world. It was covered by Al Jazeera, CNN and New Zealand’s 1News. In less than 48 hours, agitators such as George Galloway and Tommy Robinson had shared the video with their hundreds of thousands of followers. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK poured petrol on the fire when Lee Anderson, the party’s MP for Ashfield in Nottinghamshire, said he would give a medal to the officer, who now faces criminal charges for assault.
In Rochdale, the home town of the man injured by the officer, 19-year-old Muhammed Fahir, there was concern that two nights of protest and a frenzied social media storm would spill over into wider disorder.
“Definitely at some points there was a concern that the tensions might boil over – there’s no hiding from that,” said Neil Emmott, the leader of Rochdale borough council.
Rochdale, a town blighted by controversy in recent years, was in the grip of a relatively new phenomenon in which a highly localised incident – often captured on social media – becomes the centre of toxic campaigns by online extremists, often fuelling anger on the ground.
It followed the pattern of events at Batley grammar school, where a teacher was forced into hiding after reports that a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad was shown to pupils, and at another West Yorkshire school where Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, falsely claimed a Syrian schoolboy “attacks young English girls”. Both led to demonstrations outside the schools.
This weekend authorities were on high alert over a planned protest at Manchester airport after a flyer was distributed online stating “no flights will take off”.
Fahir’s family urged protesters to stand down on Friday night. In a statement on social media, they asked people to “refrain from attending the planned Manchester airport demonstration this weekend”, adding: “We would not like anyone to be inconvenienced as a result.”
They also ask for no further protests, emphasising the importance of allowing them time to heal and for due process to take its course.
In Rochdale, imams said they had been “inundated” with “concerns, anger, anxiety and frustration” over the footage.
Muslim community leaders held a series of emergency meetings with police chiefs and senior politicians, including a “gold command” meeting at Greater Manchester police (GMP) headquarters on Thursday night, as leaders sought to prevent tensions from being inflamed by “nefarious actors” – as one senior official put it – with no connection to the Pennines town.
After Friday prayers, imams expressed their “absolute condemnation of the horrific actions” of some GMP officers. In what was seen as a vital call for calm, they reassured worshippers they had received a commitment that “a full and proper investigation will take place with community engagement”. They added: “We demand absolute and speedy justice for this family and make dua [a prayer of invocation] that this never happens again.”
The most significant intervention happened away from the glare of television cameras and social media. At Castlemere community centre, in one of the most deprived areas of England, about 40 leading members of Rochdale’s Muslim community met senior politicians including Emmott, Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor, his deputy Kate Green, and Steve Rumbelow, the chief executive of Rochdale borough council, on Friday in an attempt to defuse the pressure. While many in the room were united in wanting calm, one observer said there had been “agitators”, said to be allies of Galloway, who met Fahir’s family on Friday.
At the exact moment the town’s civic leaders were trying to take the heat out of the situation, the lawyer who said he was representing the family, Akhmed Yakoob, was dialling up the rhetoric.
In an interview on LBC, he called the officer’s actions an “attempted assassination” and said Fahir’s older brother, believed to be a serving GMP constable, was “afraid that an assassination attempt on his life might take place if he goes to work”. He indicated that Fahir’s mother had been the victim of racial abuse while on an incoming flight from Pakistan.
He had earlier claimed Fahir, who was seen walking into an ambulance, was “fighting for his life” and that a CT scan had revealed a cyst on his brain. “God forbid, young Fahir passes away from his brain injuries,” he said.
Yakoob, who stood unsuccessfully as an independent in the general election and the West Midlands mayoral contests this year, is no stranger to controversy.
He is being investigated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority for falsely accusing a teacher of racism.
The 36-year-old, who has 200,000 followers on TikTok and has been posting frequent updates about Fahir’s case, apologised in June after being criticised for saying on a podcast that “70% of hell is going to be women” and for failing to condemn a guest saying he would give his wife a “backhander” if she made money dancing on TikTok.
Burnham and Paul Waugh, the newly elected Rochdale MP, have attempted to wrestle back the narrative by emphasising the family’s appeal for calm.
One senior figure expressed concern that Yaxley-Lennon was using the incident to help publicise his rally in London on Saturday, which he had billed as “the biggest patriotic show of force this country has ever seen”.
The English Defence League co-founder told his 692,000 followers the authorities in Rochdale had been “cowed” by “mobs of Muslims” protesting outside the town’s police station, and urged those who were “sickened by another week of imported crimes and riots” to march with him in the capital.
In Rochdale, meanwhile, leaders hoped for calm. Emmott said he was concerned “to see people using this disturbing incident for their own sinister purposes”. He added: “There is still some agitation but it’s fair to say there’s a commitment in the community to not allow this to spill over.”
