‘This guy is dangerous’: British Pakistanis fear Musk is stoking racism

Azmat Khan, a British Pakistani taxi driver, is not usually much of a worrier.

But recently, as he drives his cab at night through London’s ice-cold streets, he has become increasingly anxious.

“We’ve just had a summer of unrest with misinformation fuelling far-right activists in this country, partly thanks to X, and now he’s back, fanning the flames again,” Khan said of the South-Africa born tech billionaire Elon Musk, who has used the social media platform he owns to rage about British sexual abuse convicts of Pakistani heritage.

“This guy’s dangerous, and yes, I’m worried,” Khan, a 35-year-old father of three, told Al Jazeera, sharing his fears of collective punishment.

“Our community has seen through this kind of scapegoating before. But with Musk’s platform and resources, the threat has reached an entirely new level.”

Khan tunes in to the pulse of the city through his passengers and says he has noticed a troubling shift in back-seat conversations.

Some passengers have talked about what they called the “threats” Muslims and migrants bring to the UK.

In recent weeks, Musk has turned his focus to child sexual assault cases that took place over several decades in northern English towns such as Rochdale, Oldham, and Telford.

As well as relentlessly sharing grim details of the cases involving British Pakistani men, several of them taxi drivers, Musk has called for a new national inquiry, amplified posts that suggest dual national convicts should be stripped of their UK citizenship, and targeted Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government, accusing politicians of a “cover-up”.