by INDLIEB FARAZI SABER
Hate crimes against Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim in the United Kingdom are up by 140 percent compared with this time last year, according to British police.
The United Kingdom anti-Islamophobia organisation Tell MAMA has received a sevenfold increase in reports of Islamophobia since October 7, when Hamas fighters attacked southern Israel, killing 1,139 people and taking 240 others captive, including women and children. Since then, more than 20,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, including at least 8,000 children, according to health officials in the enclave.
In the United States, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim civil rights group, said it had received 2,171 complaints of Islamophobia and anti-Arab bias since October 7, a 172 percent increase since the previous year.
Last month three men were shot in Vermont, and around the same period, Stuart Seldowitz, a former adviser to President Barak Obama, was captured on video taunting and threatening a fast food vendor in Manhattan with Islamophobic abuse.
While the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has a lengthier definition of Islamophobia (PDF), the UK’s All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims uses the following definition: “Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.”
The incidents accompanying the recent statistics range from verbal harassment to violence against Palestinian human rights supporters and represent “an unprecedented surge in bigotry”, CAIR’s Research and Advocacy Director Corey Saylor said in a statement released to Al Jazeera.
“Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism are out of control in ways we have not seen in almost ten years.”
Saylor says that in the US, the last large wave of Islamophobia was during US President Donald Trump’s announcement in December 2015 of a ban on visitors from a set of Muslim-majority nations.
On October 15, six-year-old Palestinian-American boy Wadea Al-Fayoume was stabbed to death at his Illinois home by the apartment’s landlord in what police said was an anti-Muslim hate crime, reportedly in response to the Hamas attack on Israel.
The UK has witnessed anti-Muslim language being used at universities and schools, including people being called “terrorists”, reports Tell MAMA. Other incidents have included acts of vandalism.
Al Jazeerafor more