Anti-Islam hate crimes double in only a year

SCOTLAND is in the grip of a wave of anti-Islamic hate crime, after the number of offences almost doubled in the past year.

The sharp increase in race-hate attacks revealed by official figures follows the Paris massacres last year and other Islamic State terrorist atrocities.

Scottish Government data shows that ‘charges where conduct was derogatory to Islam have nearly doubled (up 89 per cent) from 71 charges in 2014-15 to 134 charges in 2015-16’.

The Islamophobic attacks are also getting more violent. There has been a more than five-fold rise in the proportion of anti-Islamic race-hate charges involving physical assaults in the past three years, from 3 per cent in 2013 to 16 per cent in 2016.

The new figures emerged from the Scottish Government’s latest report on hate crimes. It comes after Nicola Sturgeon said: ‘This country has a long and proud history of welcoming people of all nationalities’.

Refugee groups have expressed concern hate crime suffered by immigrants is under-reported because many have fled countries where they could not trust law enforcement.

Human rights lawyer Aamer Anwar said the rise in anti-Islamic attacks was ‘extremely alarming’ but was ‘hardly surprising’ because some people see Muslims as ‘fair game’.

The Scottish Government report found the rise was not attributable to a single event but to better reporting of these types of crimes.

But it also emerged that Scottish Muslims have been subjected to a wave of hate crimes since the Paris attacks. These included people being attacked in the street, receiving death threats or suffering verbal abuse. In the six days after the massacre on November 13, 64 racially or religiously motivated hate crimes were reported to the police.

Hate crime figures overall show a total of 3,712 race hate charges were reported in 2015-16, a decrease on last year when the figure was 3,817 and the lowest number reported since 2003-04.

Some 1,020 charges were reported relating to sexual orientation, up 20 per cent on the previous year; and 201 were related to disability, an increase of 14 per cent.

Roman Catholicism is the religion most noted in religiously-aggravated charges (51 per cent in 2015-16), followed by Protestantism (24 per cent) and Islam (23 per cent).

Chief Superintendent Barry McEwan of Police Scotland said: ‘Tackling hate crime is a priority for Police Scotland and we are committed to rooting out crimes motivated by prejudice.

‘Today’s figures show that we must continue to encourage reporting and get across the message that hate crime will not be tolerated.’

Justice Secretary Michael Matheson said: ‘There is no place in Scotland for any crime motivated by prejudice, be it racial, religious, homophobic or any other form of intolerance.

‘While I am concerned at an increase in the number of charges on last year, including the rise in alleged offences against Islam, it does indicate an improvement in the willingness of the public to report these crimes – and that should be welcomed.

‘Intolerance in any form is simply unacceptable. There is no place for it in 21st century Scotland.’

‘People see Muslims as fair game’