Surge in Islamophobia against London Mayor Sadiq Khan from Elon Musk's X

Racist and Islamophobic online abuse against Mayor of London Sadiq Khan more than doubled last year, most of it coming from the UK, India and the US.

Posts containing mentions of Mr Khan alongside Islamophobic keywords were analysed by the Greater London Authority, rising to 27,830 in 2024. This is more than double the number of posts obtained in the previous year, which had risen to 12,173.

The slurs refer to Mr Khan's Pakistani and Muslim heritage, inaccurately claiming he has turned the British capital into a Muslim majority city, and associating immigration with the rise in crime.

Already, 2025 is on track to be another notable year for online racial abuse of Mr Khan – who was re-elected Mayor for a third term last year – with over 2,100 posts recorded already.

The peak was in 2019, when over 41,867 abusive posts were identified. The highest number of abusive posts that year came from India – around 12,000 compared to 5,000 from the UK – which the GLA linked to a protest over Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir outside the Indian embassy.

Almost 90% of the posts analysed were published on Elon Musk's social media platform X, though the analysts could not see the posts on private Facebook Groups or on platforms such as TikTok. “The true picture is likely to be worse,” a statement from the GLA said.

Almost half of the racist mentions of Sadiq Khan since 2015 came from the UK (44 per cent) followed by India (25 per cent) and the US (23 per cent).

It comes as anti-Muslim hate crimes in the UK in 2024 hit a record high, and the country's most widely used reporting service Tell MAMA faces closure after its government funding was cut unexpectedly.

Mr Khan has been a prominent voice against online abuse, and has criticised Mr Musk, whom he blames for aggravating the problem after he re-instated the accounts of far-right agitators such as Tommy Robinson.

In the wake of the far-right riots in August last year, stoked by fake news about the Southport killer being an immigrant of Muslim heritage, Mr Khan called for stricter laws policing online activity, describing the UK government's Online Safety Act as “not fit for purpose”.

Influential figures have blamed Sadiq Khan for the rise in immigration and crime in the capital, as well as his expansion of the Ultra Low Emission Zone to London's outer boroughs. Donald Trump has described Mr Khan as a “national disgrace” in 2017, among other statements.

Reform donor Charlie Mullins said the Labour Party had threatened to strip him of his OBE over his comments made about Mr Khan. The billionaire founder of a British plumbing company, and a former Conservative donor, was heavily criticised by the honours forfeiture committee for “bringing the honours system into disrepute”.

In 2023, Mr Mullins was suspended from X over his comments that “someone should kill” Mr Khan in a discussion about the ULEZ expansion.

Mr Khan's ULEZ expansion plan was the target of an online manipulation campaign which cost at least £168,000, and leveraged over 4,100 X accounts, according to an investigation by Valent Projects a UK-based tech company that seeks to uncover and track online disinformation.

Valent's founder Amil Khan said the Mayor had become a target of “racist for hire” online actors. "This is a new and growing phenomenon where individuals seek to generate and then monetise bigotry, misogyny etc, either by converting clicks into revenue from the platform or encourage followers to tip them via a link," he told The National.

Officials around the Mayor said the effect goes wider than just London’s leader. “The Mayor is extremely concerned about the impact of hateful and abusive content online,” one said. “This kind of content can have devastating real-life consequences, and it’s a problem which is getting worse not better.

“The Mayor is concerned that his treatment is discouraging young minority Brits from getting involved in politics or public life, meaning we're losing a lot of talent. It could be having a chilling effect on ethnic minorities putting their head above the parapet.

“The Mayor is calling for both more action from social media companies to protect their users and stronger regulation from governments to ensure they fulfil their responsibilities.”

Mr Khan faces a “head of state level” of security threat and has described his round-the-clock security details as comparable to that laid on for the monarch.