Muslim chair of Reform UK faces storm of racist abuse from party supporters
Zia Yusuf, the British Muslim chair of the right-wing Reform party, has faced a barrage of racist and Islamophobic abuse after the party suspended MP Rupert Lowe on Friday.
In a statement on Friday, the anti-immigrant party, which regularly tops political polls and is considered a major threat to the Conservative Party, accused Lowe of verbally threatening Yusuf with physical violence, saying it had referred Lowe to the police.
Reform also said Lowe faced bullying allegations from two women who had worked from him. This came a day after the former chairman of Southampton Football Club, who has over 300,000 followers on X, questioned Nigel Farage's leadership in an interview with the Daily Mail.
Lowe has strongly denied the accusations and said they are politically motivated.
Over the following days Yusuf, the Muslim millionaire who became Reform's largest donor shortly before the July 2024 election, faced a torrent of racist and Islamophobic abuse online.
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Much of it appears to be coming from social media users supportive of Reform.
'British Muslim patriot'
In recent months Lowe, whose questions in parliament regularly go viral online, has taken a harder line on immigration and Islam than party leader Farage.
Farage was strongly criticised by many Reform members for saying in a podcast last year that he didn't want to "alienate all of Islam".
Yusuf himself has insisted he is a "British Muslim patriot", and that most Muslims in Britain are as well.
By contrast, Lowe regularly calls for mass deportations and insists that no Palestinian asylum seekers should be allowed into Britain. Last week he advocated a ban on halal slaughter.
One far-right conspiracy theory flying around X, for which there is no basis, accuses Yusuf of engineering Lowe's ousting because of his strong positions on migration and Islam. Others have suggested that Yusuf is plotting to undermine Reform from the inside.
"It has to be asked was this Zia Yusuf's plan all along," an anonymous account asked in a post on Friday that received nearly 8,000 likes.
"Did he buy into Reform just to destroy it from within and remove any opposition to the Islamic direction this country seems to be heading?"
Far-right commentator Laurence Fox said in a post that racked up 18,000 likes: "There cannot be a valid opposition party in the UK with Zia Yusuf anywhere near it.
"A Britain focused party cannot have a Mohammedan as the chair."
There cannot be a valid opposition party in the UK with @ZiaYusufUK anywhere near it.
— Laurence Fox (@LozzaFox) March 7, 2025
A Britain focused party cannot have a Mohammedan as the chair.
Islam is not your friend if you believe in free speech, family and British culture.
You cannot buy us.
We are not for sale.
Many users referred to Yusuf by his full name Muhammad Zia Yusuf, seemingly intending to accentuate his Muslim identity.
"I’ll ask the question as everyone else seems to be skirting around it - why is Muhammed Zia Yusuf anywhere near the Reform Party?" read one post with over 7,000 likes.
"If I wanted to elect a Muslim, I’d join the Labour Party."
Another user shared the iconic "one pound fish" video sung by a British-Pakistani market trader, which went viral over a decade ago, saying the singer was Yusuf.
A popular YouTuber posted "DEPORT ZIA YUSUF", accompanied by a video of Lowe calling for deportations.
Civil war within Reform
Yusuf’s parents migrated to Britain from Sri Lanka in the 1980s and worked in the National Health Service (NHS). He was born in Scotland and attended the fee-paying Hampton School in Middlesex on a 50 percent scholarship.
"My parents came here legally," Yusuf told The Telegraph last year. "When I talk to my friends they are as affronted as anyone by illegal Channel crossings, which are an affront to all hard-working British people but not least the migrants who played by the rules and came legally."
He worked as an investment banker for Goldman Sachs before quitting to set up Velocity Black, a luxury concierge app which he sold for over £30m in 2023.
Yusuf told the Guardian last year that racists were not welcome in Reform. He said he joined the party because British values are “worth protecting”.
“Millions gave their lives in the World Wars to do so, including hundreds of thousands of Muslims.”
In recent months, even as Reform has surged in the polls, the party leadership has come under pressure to take more hardline stances on hot-button issues like grooming gangs, which Lowe is particularly vocal about.
Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, had been rumoured to be considering donating to Reform but caused shockwaves in January by saying Farage was not fit to be leader because of his opposition to far-right anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson.
Musk suggested that Lowe would be a better leader.
It is widely believed among many Reform supporters that Farage has recently dialed down his rhetoric in order to make Reform more acceptable as a mainstream British party.
Lowe himself has accused Farage of being soft on immigration.
In the past, Farage has made a series of comments that have resulted in accusations of Islamophobia.
'If we politically alienate the whole of Islam, we will lose'
- Nigel Farage
In 2013, he said some Muslims are “coming here to take us over”. In 2015, he declared that some Muslims want to become “a fifth column and kill us”.
And last June, he asserted that young Muslims do not share British values, and insisted there are streets in Oldham “where no one speaks English”.
Since then, he has signalled that he opposes the wholesale demonisation of Muslims, despite the views of other politicians within Reform.
"If we politically alienate the whole of Islam, we will lose," Farage said on a right-wing podcast, citing the alleged fast growth of the Muslim population in Britain.
He said "we have to do everything we can" to bring most British Muslims "with us".
This is a message that many in his party disagree with. And the civil war within Reform UK is unlikely to end any time soon.
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