A Simple Question: UK hate-crimes & Islamophobia

Описание: Police in the UK have launched a hate crime investigation after people received letters asking them to carry out attacks on Muslims. West Yorkshire Police said that it had received around six reports of letters advertising “Punish a Muslim Day”, while Londoners and Birmingham citizens said they had received identical posts. A Bradford Councillor, who was among the recipients of the letter, said that when he opened it and saw the content he was "horrified.” “I think it has been sent out by a group with the intent of alarming people and to stir up racial hatred,” he told The Telegraph. “My main concern is that it could get into the hands of other disaffected people in Bradford who just need that push to act.” The letters pledged “rewards” for those who do violent acts against Muslims ranging from verbal abuse of them to burning or bombing mosques. In the letters, there is a points-based scoring system, rising from 25 “points” for pulling the headscarf off a Muslim woman to 2,500 for “nuke Mecca”.

Islamophobia is growing in the UK, with on-going and regular scaremongering about Muslims from certain sections of the media and with anti-Muslim hatred becoming more socially acceptable, having “passed the dinner table test”. There is a real danger that such prejudice will further stoke up anti-Muslim hatred and provide the fodder for an already growing number of acts of violence against the Muslim community.

There have been in recent years, a rise in attacks against mosques, physical abuse against Muslims, anti-Muslim graffiti at a university, a rise in verbal abuse and hate mail, reports of Islamophobia in schools and continued online abuse against Muslims through social media.
Britain has an "acceptance" of anti-Muslim rhetoric that would not be tolerated for other minorities, it has been claimed. Matthew Feldman, who studies the contemporary far-right in Europe, also outlined how attacks on mosques or Muslim centers take place "less than once every fortnight" in the UK. Muslim women “bore the brunt” of rising Islamophobia in the UK last year, according to a new report. Of the 765 victims and 874 perpetrators identified in the findings by hate-monitoring group Tell MAMA, that group made up 56 per cent of victims. Women were more likely to be attacked or abused if they were wearing Islamic clothing, as more than a third of victims were visibly Muslim females, the report said.
The abuse had become so targeted, that a number of women were resorting to modifying their appearance. Some had resorted to wearing caps in place of headscarves to prevent being attacked. More than two thirds – or 69 per cent – of perpetrators were white men, who made up 69 per cent of all offenders, the report said. It also found that street-level anti-Muslim acts jumped 47 per cent in 2016 on the year before, with the problem worsening in the aftermath of terrorist attacks and the Brexit referendum found. The watchdog recorded a 475 per cent increase in the number of anti-Muslim incidents in the week following the last year's European Union (EU) referendum.
There were 12 incidents in the seven days starting on 17 June, compared to 69 incidents in the week beginning 24 June 2016. “Perpetrators of anti-Muslim incidents often reference mainstream discourse concerning immigration and terrorism alongside broader Islamophobic and dehumanising language in order to abuse their victim,” the report said. A worrying illustration of these "community relations" in practice came when Tory education minister Michael Gove came out against the building of a mosque in his Camberley constituency. According to Gove's 2006 book, Celsius 7/7, he believes that suicidal violence is integral to political Islam.
It is entirely possible to make the most stereotypical and derogatory attacks on Islam, and Muslims in general, and still be taken seriously in public life. The same could certainly not be said for someone who becomes known as anti-Semitic. Even the BNP recently attempted to put forward noxious justification for why it no longer has such a big problem with Jews. This is reflected in the fashionable rebranding of the West as resting on Judeo-Christian roots. By contrast, prior to the Second World War when it was mainly a Christian heritage which was cited, it was the British credentials of all "Semites" (Jews and Arabs) which were regularly questioned.

"This programme was produced by Aparat Ltd for Press TV"