New figures released by police forces indicate a rise in hate crimes targeting Muslims in the UK this year, especially after the brutal murder of a soldier by two Islamic extremists on the streets of London.
The Metropolitan Police, Britain's largest law enforcement force, recorded 500 anti-Muslim crime cases this year. The Tell MAMA (Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks) project reported 840 hate crimes since April and it said the figure is expected to rise to 1,000 by the end of March 2014.
This compared with 582 anti-Muslim cases Tell MAMA dealt with from March 2012 to March 2013.
Many police forces reported a surge in anti-Muslim hate crimes after the murder of soldier Lee Rigby by the Islamic extremists on the streets of southeast London in May.
Scotland Yard was among 43 forces in England and Wales approached with a Freedom of Information request on such crimes by the UK's Press Association.
Only 24 provided figures on anti-Muslim crimes and incidents recorded, with many admitting they did not always record the faith of a religious hate-crime victim.
"Recording processes are not in line with each other. One force will allow an officer to flag an incident as anti-Muslim, another force will flag it as religious hate crime," said Fiyaz Mughal, director of Faith Matters, which runs Tell MAMA.
"We also need more robust sentencing. In one case, a pig's head was left outside a mosque and the perpetrator came away with a community sentence. When you target a mosque, you are targeting the whole community," he said.
The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) previously said 71 incidents were reported to its national community tension team over five days after Rigby's murder.
Mujhal said the reaction to the murder caused the Islamophobic crimes to jump significantly. "The far right groups, particularly the English Defence League, perniciously use the internet and social media to promote vast amounts of online hate," he said.
The ACPO spokesperson on hate crime said police were committed to reducing the harm caused by hate crime and it was vital to encourage more victims who suffer such crimes to report them to police or through third party reporting facilities like Tell MAMA.
