Dear friends,

What an incredible week! Look what we’ve done fam, we, the collective made this happen! This is just the beginning, we have much more work to do. On Monday morning we launched an anti-racist petition to drown out the racists, throw our arms around our beloved England team and players and demand the government and FA take action to ban racists from football.

By late Tuesday evening a million of you joined us on this journey in active anti-racist solidarity. On Wednesday, the Prime Minister stood up in parliament at Prime Minister's Question Time and agreed in principle to our demands. On Thursday we were delighted to join a true supporter of the cause, Lorraine, again on her breakfast TV show, and we woke up this morning to hear our petition mentioned on Thought for the Day just before we went on Women’s Hour where we were able to talk about our campaign, our lived experiences of gendered Islamophobia and racism and of course our passion for the beautiful game!

This is what you have done - together we have raised our voices, reclaimed the narrative from the racists and bigots and given the players on our England team a million-strong virtual hug.

You have helped us build a broad anti-racism movement, and we’re just getting started. We want to hold the government to account for its promises, chase down social media companies and the rules that bind them - and we are still waiting for an invitation from the FA (our diaries are open for you, FA!).

We’re proud of the way we have all come together this week. Have a great weekend and relax - you deserve it. We’ll be back Monday asking for more of your support and energy to make the change we want to see happen. In the mean time, do keep sharing the petition and let’s build the biggest anti-racism movement this country has seen.

With huge thanks and in solidarity,

Shaista, Amna & Huda
#TheThreeHijabis