London:
The number of hate incidents against Muslims in Britain has more than tripled after the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas, a monitoring group said on Thursday.
Tell MAMA recorded 2,010 such cases in the four months since Hamas' deadly attack on Israel on October 7 sparked the conflict.
That was the largest number of cases recorded in a four-month period, said a statement from the organization, which was set up to monitor and report such incidents.
The latest figures are up from 600 incidents in the same period in 2022-2023, an increase of 335 percent.
“We are deeply concerned about the impact the war between Israel and Gaza is having on hate crime and on social cohesion in Britain,” said Tell MAMA director Iman Atta.
“This increase in anti-Muslim hatred is unacceptable and we hope that political leaders will speak out to send a clear message that anti-Muslim hatred, like anti-Semitism, is unacceptable in our country.”
Tell MAMA that 901 cases occurred offline, while 1,109 were online. Most of the offline incidents took place in the British capital London, it added.
This included offensive behavior, threats, assaults, vandalism, discrimination, hate speech and anti-Muslim literature.
Women were targeted in 65 percent of cases, the group said.
Earlier this month, a Jewish charity reported that anti-Semitic incidents in Britain reached record levels last year, with a rise following the Hamas attack.
The Community Security Trust (CST), which monitors anti-Semitism in Britain, recorded 4,103 'anti-Jewish hate incidents' in 2023, the highest annual number since it started counting them in 1984.
This represented an increase of 147 percent compared to the 1,662 incidents registered in 2022.
The Hamas attack resulted in the deaths of about 1,160 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on Israeli official figures.
Israel's subsequent invasion of Gaza and the ongoing military campaign have killed at least 29,410 people, mostly women and children, according to the latest Health Ministry figures in the Hamas-held area.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)