UK Anti-Muslim crimes need ‘robust action’

Britain’s largest Muslim organization is urging “robust action” against Islamophobic attacks as more violence and hate crimes remain unreported in the country.

The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) is worried over the “ethnic profiling” of Muslims as they are 42 times more likely to be stopped and detained by the police under the Terrorism Act.

In an address to the council’s AGM in Birmingham, MCB secretary general Farooq Murad will say crimes targeted at Muslims including violent assaults, death threats and desecration of graves need to be tackled.

Murad says victims of many cases of abuse against Muslims do not report the incidents as the police are not inviting enough.

The MCB call has been supported by leading academics, a counter-terrorist think-tank and other Muslim groups.

The Metropolitan Police has recently confirmed that only London witnessed 762 Islamophobic offences since April 2009, including 333 in 2010 and 57 since this April.

The Met has admitted “significant” under-reporting of hate crimes as well as “missed opportunities” to protect victims from harm.

Murad is expected to draw to that issue in his speech, saying only two police forces in Britain have registered 1,200 cases of anti-Muslim crimes in 2010 while all police forces across the country only reported 546 anti-Semitic offenses for the year.

“Islamophobic attacks, on persons and properties, are committed by a tiny minority, but the number of incidents is increasing. Robust action is necessary and this means we must have a systematic manner of recording, monitoring and analyzing such attacks. Only a small number of police forces record anti-Muslim hate crimes,” Murad will say.

Muslims have reported different crimes against the members of their communities in Britain including petrol bomb attacks on imams and mosque staff, vandalism and insulting messages in the form of fixing pigs’ heads to minarets and entrances.

“It is not a piece of cloth on someone’s head or face, the shape of someone’s dress, a harmless concrete pillar on a religious building or even not speaking a common language that creates alienation,” Murad is expected to say at the gathering at the Bordesley Center.

This comes as Robert Lambert, co-director of the European Muslim Research Centre and research fellow at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, Exeter University, said they are working to prepare a report on the details and numbers of attacks on Muslims after 9/11 attacks.

Lambert who has formerly worked as a counter-terrorism officer with the police said collecting data on the offenses directed at Muslims is difficult due to a lack of political will.

“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,” he added.