West Midlands Police evacuated hundreds of pupils from a school and searched it with sniffer dogs [GETTY]
Hundreds of students and staff, mainly Muslim, were left in fear on Tuesday after a bomb threat at their school in the UK city of Birmingham forced them to evacuate their school.
450 pupils, including children as young as 11, had to evacuate after a threatening email was sent to the Hamd House School in Birmingham and to school regulators Ofsted. Police swept through the institution, with sniffer dogs searching the grounds, before the students and staff were given the all-clear to return.
While it has not been confirmed the attack was an Islamophobic one, West Midlands Police told The New Arab that officers were satisfied there was not a credible threat.
Despite the seriousness of the incident, it failed to make the headlines in mainstream publications or prompt a government response, with local paper Birmingham Live being the only outlet to report it initially.
“I think the message this sends is really quite a scary one because it shows that this is not worth covering,” Nima Akram, founder of NewsCord, told The New Arab.
“In some ways, it greenlights future attacks or puts no pressure on the government or anyone to act against this.”
Akram, who founded NewsCord to detect and expose media bias, said that even if mainstream media were to pick up such stories, it would be buried on their site.
The Canary, 5 Pillars and Middle East Eye soon picked up the incident, but mainstream media have seemingly ignored the story.
Still nothing.
48 hours. 450 Muslim children evacuated from a bomb threat.
The BBC. Sky. ITV. Silence.
The only two who covered it: @TheCanaryUK @5Pillarsuk
Muslim journalists (@RmSalih and @ani_says1) did the story the newsrooms with the big budgets and the reach wouldn’t… https://t.co/yOn3CXoLfS pic.twitter.com/ntMONuak87
— IslamophobiaUK (@uk_islamophobia) July 16, 2026
‘Media blackout’
While it’s hard to pin down why the story was not picked up, Akram says there seems to be a lack of reportage when it comes to anti-Muslim incidents in western media, suggesting that one religion or religious group matters less than others.
“There’s almost a media blackout on coverage of attacks against Muslims in the UK,” Akram said, contrasting this with wall-to-wall coverage of antisemitic attacks.
“All of these crimes should be condemned. But you’re seeing that selective outrage, and then you’re seeing the government makes decisions differently, which seem even more unfair and cements this vicious loop.”
After the Golders Green attack, where two Jewish men were stabbed, through their analysis, NewsCord found that in just 72 hours, 372 articles were published across all of the Western mainstream and global outlets and failed to mention that a Muslim man was also stabbed three hours before.
However, a stabbing spree in Edinburgh where several Muslims were attacked was only covered by 30 outlets in the first 72 hours.
“This really just sends that signal of what it seems like the establishment is trying to further,” Akram said.
From a mosque replica being added to a bonfire in Northern Ireland, to a Muslim man being stabbed outside a mosque in East London, the UK has been witnessing a string of anti-Muslim attacks with no official comment on the matter.
“We’re seeing in general that there is this selective outrage amongst the media class and also the Prime Minister and [the] kind of the language in government,” Akram says, highlighting that no Cobra meetings have been held after major anti-Muslim attacks, which is typically done to respond to national crises/
“There really is this double standard that’s becoming extremely clear to see,” Akram added.
While the threat ended up being a hoax, the lack of stories reflect where priorities lay, with Akram noting that £250 million had been allocated for security for the Jewish community, with no new funding for the Muslim community.
