Muslim hate crime in London has shot up by almost 65% in twelve months. Metropolitan Police figures show that offences have increased from 344 to 570 in the last year, with many attacks targeting women wearing the headscarf.
Fiyaz Mughal, director of the Islamophobia monitoring group Tell MAMA, said that he had been expecting an increase of between 30-50%, and had not predicted such a dramatic rise, wrote The Huffington Post.
“It’s certainly linked to current events, but the severity of the reports we get vary, depending on what is happening in the news,” he told HuffPost UK. “When there’s an IS beheading, or there’s a terror threat made against the UK, you’ll find a bombardment of online abuse and threats. And it will be a discernible spike, increasing for a short period and then dying down.”
“The most significant rise in numbers came after the killing of Lee Rigby (who was murdered in Woolwich by two violent extremists) last year, that was extremely prolonged. But it did die down and life became more peaceful,” Mughal said.
“That led to a longer period of threat, and more violence, with direct threats and attacks against mosques.”
