New report on rising Muslim attacks sidesteps 'exaggeration' claims

A NEW REPORT based on findings by the monitoring service, Tell MAMA (Measuring Anti Muslim Attacks) suggests hate attacks on Muslims quadrupled in the months after Lee Rigby’s death.

The news comes after The Telegraph’s Andrew Gilligan wrote that Tell MAMA had previously ‘exaggerated the scale and nature of attacks against Muslims’.

Following Gilligan’s 2013 expose on Tell MAMA, the then government-funded group complained to the Press Complaints Commission (PCC). But in April this year the PCC ruled The Telegraph had reported accurately and agreed that Tell MAMA had exaggerated the prevalence of anti-Muslim attacks.

Tell MAMA’s latest report, launched at counter extremism think tank Quilliam on Wednesday evening, was compiled by researchers at Teeside University’s Centre for Fascist, Anti-Fascist and Post-Fascist Studies.

Between 1 May 2013 and 28th February 2014 there were 734 self-reported cases of anti-Muslim hate crimes. Of these, 599 cases took place online while 135 occurred offline. The statistics were published in the same week a senior police officer said the number of crimes arising from social media was ‘a real problem’ as both the public and police seek to understand when an online insult can be defined as a crime. 

Responding to the claim that 135 was a low figure, Tell MAMA’s director Fiyaz Mughal, OBE, said an estimated 60 per cent of hate crime is not reported. ‘Our work with Muslim communities shows the main brunt of anti-Muslim hate at a street level is targeted at visible Muslim women… Many women don’t report [to the police] the hate crimes they suffer. Five out of six victims who reported to us, didn’t go to the police.’

Backlash

Mr Mughal said reported incidents increased from 20 to 110 per week after the murder of Lee Rigby and that these figures correlated with a Metropolitan Police’s report (obtained under a Freedom of Information request) that said there was a ‘backlash’ against Muslims in the weeks that followed the murder of Lee Rigby, relative to the previous year.

‘Our figures were to some degree tallying with what the Metropolitan Police was putting out,’ Mr Mughal said.

‘Within three months of the murder of Lee Rigby there were 34 mosque attacks, 12 of them based on graffiti, eight involved windows smashed, four involved the desecration of the mosque with pigs’ blood, five involving a break-in and violence against worshippers in the mosque, seven involved arson, and three involved bombings and potential bombings.’ 

Transparent

‘Working in this arena is so contested right now,’ Mr Mughal later admitted, adding ‘some of the articles written about me, you’d think, “God, I’m probably Osama Bin Laden’s long lost cousin”…over time hopefully they will see the very open and receptive group we are, and very transparent group we are.’

Quilliam researcher Dr Usama Hasan who earlier this year told Lapido hate crimes against Muslims were on the rise said the report was ‘much needed’.

While Tell MAMA received fewer than 600 complaints from Britain’s three million Muslims, Community Safety Trust (CST) reported a similar number of incidents among Britain’s 300,000 Jews. The disproportionate numbers suggest anti-Semitic attacks are a bigger problem than anti-Islamic crimes.

‘The problem is complex,’ Mr Mughal replied, citing ‘superfragmentation’ among Britain’s Muslim community. ‘The victim gets lost by not understanding where they should be reporting [the incidences of hate crime to]'.

Mr Mughal added the CST’s 30 year history meant they were better established and well known in Jewish communities than Tell MAMA is currently in Muslim communities.

Milo Yiannopoulos from Breitbart London has added his voice to those criticising Tell MAMA. He writes: ‘The report says Islamophobia has set community cohesion in Britain back 20 years. Forgive me, but I think you mean Islamic terrorism, its consequences and the social conservatism and judgmental attitudes of some Muslims [has set it back]. Tell MAMA seems to have its heart in the right place but their output is incredibly frustrating to read.’