In a world brimming with hate, footballer Mo brought hope, on and off the pitch, and Brian Reade reflects on how he won so many people over
Mohamed Salah of Liverpool
Mo Salah showed the impressionable and marginalised that hate based on religion is not the answer(Image: Ryan Crockett/DeFodi Images/DeFodi via Getty Images)
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Us Scousers love nothing better than humiliating racist meatheads by stopping their hate marches before they even begin. In 2015, a White Man March by National Action ended with them cowering in Lime Street Station’s left luggage depot as onlookers sang: “Master race, you’re having a laugh.”
When the English Defence League tried it on two years later they were forced to scuttle back to their coaches as the Benny Hill theme tune blared out and hundreds of us cheered and laughed them out of town.
And last Saturday, the fag ends of one of Nigel Farage’s former creations, UKIP, tried to hold a “Walk With Jesus” rally, despite all the city’s Christian leaders disowning them. More than a thousand protestors, believing it was really a “Hate Muslims With Us” rally by a party now aligned to far-right Christian nationalists, stopped the few dozen of them in their tracks. They walked. Out of Liverpool.
In a world brimming with hate, much of it down to warped views on religion, it’s hard to find light amid the darkness. But someone who will soon walk out of Liverpool with love and gratitude ringing in his ears offers hope: Mo Salah. Not merely for his hundreds of goals, but for showing the impressionable and the marginalised that hate based on skin colour or religion is not the answer to their problems.
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In 2019, the think-tank Immigration Policy Lab found that hate crimes had decreased by 18.9% on Merseyside in the year after the high-profile Muslim signed for Liverpool. No similar effect was found for other types of crime suggesting the fall in anti-Muslim hate crime was a genuine trend. They also looked at 15 million tweets by Reds fans and found that Islamophobic posts had halved, from 7.2% to 3.4%, relative to fans of other top-flight clubs.
Mumin Khan, chief executive at Liverpool’s Abdullah Quilliam mosque, said at the time: “Salah is changing hearts and minds. People come through the door who are non-Muslim and say it’s because of his achievements. ‘Can we see what a mosque really looks like?’ they ask.”
A large proportion of young, white, Liverpool fans saw Salah’s sujud goal celebration (offering thanks to Allah) and pictures of him smiling by a Christmas tree with his hijab-wearing wife and kids and sang, “If he’s good enough for you, he’s good enough for me. If he scores another few, then I’ll be Muslim too.”
They got over the fear and loathing that Islamophobics spread. It was similar to when John Barnes signed for Liverpool in 1987. Almost overnight the vast majority of vocal racism vanished at Anfield. Suddenly to be attacking any black player for his skin colour was to be attacking Liverpool.
I’m not suggesting for a second that Salah’s presence has stopped racism. But I do think it has showed some young people who may have embraced hatred of Muslims the illogicality of such a position, and made them reject the poison that the likes of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (who changed his name to Tommy Robinson to honour a football hooligan) try to pollute their minds with.
So thanks for all those genius moments on the pitch, Mo. But thanks too for showing how ugly and illogical it is to despise someone simply for following a different religion. For that alone, you’ll always be the Egyptian King.