Hate crimes on rise in UK

An Islamic center in UK has condemned a spike in hate crimes across England and Wales since 2012.

The Muslim Council of Britain and the Church of England have says the targets of hate crimes are predominantly Muslims. According to the council, racially or religiously aggravated harassment crimes – such as verbal or written racist abuse – increased from a total of 15,249 to 17,605 between 2012 and 2014.

The figures, obtained from 41 of 43 police forces approached through Freedom of Information (FoI) requests, show more than 47,000 hate crimes recorded over the past three years.

“These figures showing the rise of Islamophobic attacks sadly are not that surprising. If you consider how over the last couple of years we have seen a concentrated effort by the Islamophobia industry in America and Europe and especially in the UK now as well to demonize Islam, it is understandable that obviously that anti-Muslim rhetoric will obviously going to spin out into physical violence,” a member of Muslim Public Affairs Committee in London, Raza Nadim told Press TV.

He went on noting that the problem is a very islamophobic ideology that is being constantly pumped out and propped up  by millions of pounds and dollars across the world especially in the Western world which looks to demonize the Muslim  community.

He slammed the western media in covering crimes by different groups saying:”When a Muslim commits a crime, we have many right-wing commentators who are quick to point the finger at the religion of the criminal and the ideology that drives them, and yet when the Muslims are the victims of hate crimes we don’t see people actually linking the story.”

He warned that the UK is lurching towards the right saying:”What you are seeing is that many of the politicians, many of the political elite and those in the media world are pushing and pumping up a very white supremacist bigoted narrative, Islamophobic and racist in its nature… that leads to more hate crimes and more violence.”

He referred to the pessimism among Muslims towards police and said:”Because of the lack of trust that many Muslims have in the police, because of prevent and other kinds of counter-extremism policies that are in place, many Muslims strongly believe and feel that the police and the government are working against them rather than working with them.”

He said there are hundreds of not thousands of cases that Muslims are actually not reporting of them being victims of Islamophobic crimes.

He called on police to stop treating Muslims as suspects adding:” If we want to stop this upward trend of islamophobic attacks, we need to start treating them with a bit more respect, actually trying to help them out.“

He also referred to the Conservatives’ gaining power after the recent general elections and said: “With the new conservative government in place, many Muslims are actually fearful of what they see as the government turning a blind eye to the many injustices committed against Muslims here and abroad.”

MTM/MH

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