Protection for mosques as religious hate crime rises by 43% in one year

Joni Clark had to leave her home after being attacked

Mosques, synagogues and churches are to be given extra protection after figures released today showed an 18 per cent rise in hate crimes across the country.

The Home Office statistics show that there were 52,528 hate crimes recorded by police in the 12 months to the end of March this year — more than 8,000 up on the tally for the previous year.

More than four fifths of the total, which include physical attacks, verbal abuse, criminal damage and harassment, were racially motivated incidents, which rose by 15 per cent to 42,930.

But the biggest increase was in religious hate crime. It was up by 43 per cent, with an annual tally for the past year of 3,254 incidents.

Although that amounts to only six per cent of the overall number of hate crimes, the rise in religious incidents today prompted David Cameron to announce that extra funding will be provided to strengthen security of “faith establishments, including mosques” across the country.

The Prime Minister, who was today hosting the first meeting of a new Community Engagement Forum, set up to help counter extremism, also announced that anti-Muslim offences would in future be recorded as a specific category in police-recorded crime statistics.

Mr Cameron added: “I want British Muslims to know we will back them to stand against those who spread hate and to counter the narrative which says Muslims do not feel British.

“I want police to take more action against those who persecute others simply because of their religion.”

Home Secretary Theresa May also expressed concern about the extent of hate crime, saying that such offences were “deplorable” and vowing to “make further progress” in eradicating the problem.

Today’s Home Office data, which also covers disability, sexual orientation and transgender hate crimes, says that improved recording by police is likely to be the cause of some of the increase shown in the new figures.

But it also says there is “some evidence” that “specific highly publicised incidents”, such as the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby in 2013 and last year’s conflict in Israel and Gaza, can act as “trigger events” for a surge in hate crimes.

On hate crime towards gay, lesbian and transgender people, today’s figures show that offences motivated by the sexual orientation of the victim were up 22 per cent last year to 5,597.

Crimes against transgender victims totalled 605, a nine per cent rise. Disability hate crime was up 25 per cent to 2,508 offences over the year.

'I've been spat on for wearing a headscarf'

Sara Khan has been spat at on the street and abused by strangers while wearing her headscarf.

The founder of Inspire, a counter-extremism and human rights organisation, said: “I’ve been called ‘Osama Bin Laden’s wife’. I’ve had people come right up to my face effing and blinding — even when I was pushing my six-month-old daughter in her pram.”

Ms Khan, from London, added: “It’s shocking. You’re just minding your own business. It’s very dehumanising.”

Joni Clark, a convert to Islam, said she was regularly abused and attacked for wearing a burqa and had had a lit cigarette thrown at her in the street.

She said the abuse became so bad she was forced out of her home in Penge to Whitechapel, where there is a large Muslim community. Ms Clark said: “In Penge, I couldn’t walk out of my house without getting some kind of abuse. People always say Muslims isolate themselves ... but actually it is others who don’t want to mix with us.”

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