Muslims call for action against hate crimes

Britain’s biggest Muslim organisation the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) has called for ‘robust action’ to counter Islamophobic attacks amid the growing violence and under-reporting of hate crimes again British Muslims.

The MCB aims to challenge the ethnic profiling of members of its community citing that minorities are 42 times more likely to be targeted under the Terrorism Act.

MCB secretary-general Farooq Murad also hit out at the government’s proposed changes to its Prevent strategy at the council’s AGM in Birmingham. Murad said:

“At a time when Muslims in the Middle East resoundingly endorse the universal values of human rights, democracy and the rule of law, is there any reason to believe that British Muslims are any different? The latest Prevent strategy seems to think so.

For Muslims and public policy, security has become the only consideration on the agenda. It contains the implicit assumption that Muslims are less able to function in an open democracy than other people; more susceptible to totalitarian impulses and that they are more open to be incited to violence. It sends a very negative message to the community and is likely to increase Islamophobia.”

The calls, supported by leading academics, a counter-terrorist think-tank and Muslim groups, come as the Metropolitan Police confirmed a total of 762 Islamophobic offences in London since April 2009, including 333 in 2010/11 and 57 since this April. A spokesman said the Met was aware of "significant" under-reporting of hate crime, and acknowledged "missed opportunities" to keep victims safe.

Despite rising concerns about the impact of hate crime on all communities, the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) said that data on such offences are not collated centrally as this would be an "overly bureaucratic process for local forces". Assistant Chief Constable Drew Harris, who leads the police on hate crime, was unavailable for comment.

Dr Robert Lambert, co-director of the European Muslim Research Centre and research fellow at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, Exeter University, said a decade of research will report before the 10th anniversary of 11 September adding. 

"When I was working in the police, some of the notable spikes in incidents came after terrorist events such as 9/11 and 7/7. We have more than 50 incidences of fire-bomb attacks and we have yet to reach the 10-year anniversary. But no leading politician has seen fit to stand shoulder to shoulder with mosque leaders. That is quite something."

Ghaffar Hussain of the counter-extremism think-tank Quilliam said:

"Anti-Muslim bigotry is very real. It does exist. There are sections of our society who are deeply suspicious of Muslims, even of Muslims building mosques, and are threatened by the idea of Islamification across Europe."

Some 40 to 60 per cent of the mosques, Islamic centres and Muslim organisations in the UK have suffered at least one attack since 9/11.