Religious hate crime, or people being targeted for their religious beliefs, has registered a surge in Britain over the past few years with attacks on Muslims dominating official figures released by the UK Home Office in London on Tuesday.
The latest figures indicate that most religious hate crime, 52 percent of all offences, was directed at Muslims and qualified as so-called Islamophobic hate crime.
“Analysis of racially motivated hate crime by religion shows that Muslim adults were more likely to be a victim of racially motivated hate crime than other adults,” it notes.
The Jewish community were the next most commonly targeted group, being targeted in 12 percent of religious hate crimes.
The UK Home Office data revealed 94,098 hate crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales in 2017-18, up by 17 percent on the year before. This annual increase equates to a 40 percent spike for “religiously-aggravated hate crime”, with 8,336 such crimes bring recorded in 2017-18, up from 5,949 in the previous year.
Hate crime is defined as an offence which the victim considers to be driven by hostility towards their race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or transgender identity. The 2016 European Union (EU) referendum in favour of Brexit and terror attacks in the UK have been cited as some of the reasons behind the spike in such attacks.
“This increase is thought to be largely driven by improvements in police recording, although there have been spikes in hate crime following certain events such as the EU Referendum and the terrorist attacks in 2017,” the Home Office analysis reads.
In the last year, race-based hate crime in Britain increased 14 percent, while those based on sexual orientation increased 27 percent, disability 30 percent and transgender 32 percent.
The latest figures coincide with the Home Office announcing a new National Hate Crime Plan to review whether offences driven by misogyny – the dislike, contempt or ingrained prejudice against women – should also be treated as hate crimes and therefore attract tougher sentences. It will also explore whether crimes motivated by misandry, or prejudice against men, and attacks against the elderly based on ageism should be classed as hate crimes.
“Hate crime goes directly against the long-standing British values of unity, tolerance and mutual respect – and I am committed to stamping this sickening behaviour out,” said UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid at the launch of the action plan.
“Our refreshed action plan sets out how we will tackle the root causes of prejudice and racism, support hate crime victims and ensure offenders face the full force of the law,” he said.
The plan includes over GBP 1.5 million of new funding for programmes that work with schools and young people to challenge discriminatory beliefs, promote positive discussions and encourage reporting.