Supervisor Elham AbolFateh
Editor in Chief Mohamed Wadie

Muslims Are Most Vulnerable to Hate Crimes  in Britain


Thu 14 Oct 2021 | 09:47 AM
Ahmed Moamar

New data released by the British Home Office revealed that nearly half of the victims of hate crimes in England and Wales in the past year were Muslims.

The Home Office released a statement that revealed that in the year ending March 2021, the police recorded 124091 hate crimes in England and Wales, including 27030 hate crimes against Muslims.

The British police noted that racially motivated hate crimes increased by 12% to reach more than 85,000 crimes.

The statement affirmed that in March 2021, the religion of the victims of crimes was analyzed, as less than half of the targets were, meaning that 45% of the victims were Muslims.

The second group most targeted was Jews with 22%, while 16% of the crimes did not target any declared religion.

According to the ministry, hate crimes began to rise since June 2016, after the referendum to leave the European Union, then rose in June 2017 in the wake of the terrorist attacks that year, and then in the summer of 2020 in the wake of the “Black Movement Important” protests and the anti-extreme right-wing protests that followed that.

However, Hate crime against Muslims in London has risen by 65% over the last 12 months, Metropolitan Police figures show.

Islamophobic hate crime offenses have increased from 344 to 570 in the last year, with many attacks targeting women wearing traditional Islamic clothing.

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The UK Guardian affirmed on March 22, 2019, that the number of anti-Muslim hate crimes reported across Britain increased by 593% in the week after a white supremacist killed worshippers at two New Zealand mosques, an independent monitoring group has said.

The group Tell Mama said almost all of the increase comprised incidents linked to the Christchurch in New Zealand attacks in 2019, and there had been more recorded hate incidents in the last seven days than in the week after the 2017 Islamist terrorist attack in Manchester, as the Guardian said.

According to figures passed to the Guardian, 95 incidents were reported to the group between 15 March 2019, the day of the New Zealand atrocity, and midnight on 21 March. Of those, 85 incidents – 89% of the total – contained direct references to the New Zealand attacks and featured gestures such as mimicking firearms being fired at Muslims.