BRITAIN'S top race equality think tank told the Morning Star yesterday that the country is “complacent” about anti-Muslim racism, saying it is “astonishing people haven’t woken up and smelt the coffee.”

Dr Zubaida Haque, deputy director of the Runnymede Trust, made the comments after two Muslim schools were attacked on Friday at opposite ends of England.

Northumbria Police are searching for vandals who sprayed nazi graffiti inside Bahr Academy, an Islamic school in Newcastle that was used as the Byker Grove set.

Meanwhile the Metropolitan Police has arrested a 55-year-old man whom it suspects of calling for the sterilisation of Muslim pupils at the Central Foundation Girls’ School in Bow, east London.

He is believed to have filmed himself hurling hideous abuse at school girls outside the gates, saying: “They’re all going to have four or five kids each. Look at them, these cunts are going to breed like fucking rats.”

In the video, posted online, the man called for the girls to be sterilised and praised nazi Josef Mengele, an SS doctor at Auschwitz who performed gruesome and lethal experiments on prisoners. 

The Runnymede Trust said it was important not to see these incidents as separate. Ms Haque warned: “People are underestimating far-right extremism, but there should be major alarms now because this happened at schools. We need to stop being complacent about it.

“This is anti-Muslim racism – it’s just another form of racism. The same cultural tropes were used, and references to nazis.”

Alt-right thinkers like Steve Bannon, as well as Ofsted boss Amanda Spielman, who is critical of school girls wearing headscarves, have all helped to normalise anti-Muslim racism, she said.