Something worrying has happened in Liverpool since far-right and racist riots began rocking cities in England and Northern Ireland last week. Muslim women have begun exchanging safety tips online.

"Stay in groups, keep your car windows up and doors locked," one post reads.

Children of color have been too scared to show up to the local summer vacation youth club. The UK's oldest mosque now keeps its gates chained shut most of the day. An interior ministry official keeps watch from inside to monitor for potential threats.

But something remarkable has happened, too. Local Imam Adam Kelwick is beaming as he breezes in to lead prayer at the Abdullah Quilliam Mosque. He said this is because he's been busy "building bridges."

Kelwick caught global attention when he was photographed crossing a line of counter-protesters to embrace a man in a crowd chanting anti-Islam slogans outside his mosque last weekend.

"We walked over to their side and we shared food. We shared smiles. We talked. We listened," he told DW in Liverpool.

On Tuesday, things took an even more unexpected turn: "I've actually just come from one person who was at those riots, and he reached out to me. We've just been for a coffee today.

"He said to me that he actually regretted being there now," Kelwick explained.

"They're genuine people. They're genuinely worried and genuinely scared. And once they've realized that we're human, too — we care for our societies, we care for our family and we want the best for the country — then they realize that a lot of these problems that we see are also shared by us."

A few minutes drive........

© Deutsche Welle