The BBC has rightly highlighted the 70.7% rise in Islamophobic crime in the 12 months to July 2015 compared to the previous 12 months to 718 instances. Any such jump in crime rates should be taken seriously and tackled. To be attacked for one’s religion, including being punched and having dog faeces smeared on one’s head is repulsive. However, according to the Metropolitan Police Crime Figures it is still less than 0.1% of total 720,939 crimes reported, and still a fraction of the crimes of Rape (5,300) and Robbery against the Person (20,300).

Raheem Kassam of Breitbart has a point when he states that there has been a 93.4% rise in Anti-Semitic crimes to 499 in the same period. He then points out that a Jew is a number of times more likely to be a victim of a religious hate crime in London than a Muslim. However, he fluffs the figures, as he makes a comparison between London crime figures and total numbers of adherents of each religion in the UK. Yet the Greater London Authority has a Datastore with the population by borough, along with the proportion of each religious group. The Metropolitan Police Crime Figures are also by borough. From this I have looked at the ten worst boroughs for Islamophobic and Anti-Semitic Hate Crime, which I have appended below.

In Summary

• The London Borough with the highest number of reported Islamophobic hate crimes was Westminster with 54 reported in the 12 months ended July 2015, but relative to the number of Muslims living in the borough, Islington had the highest rate with 3.0 hate crimes per 1,000 Muslims.
• Overall in London reported 718 in Islamophobic hate crimes reported was equivalent to 0.6 per 1,000 Muslims.
• The London Borough with the highest number of reported Anti-Semitic hate crimes was Hackney with 122 reported in the 12 months ended July 2015, but relative to the number of Jews living in the borough, Tower Hamlets had the highest rate with 10.6 hate crimes per 1,000 Jews.
• Overall in London reported 499 in Anti-Semitic hate crimes reported was equivalent to 3.2 per 1,000 Jews.
• A Jew in London is therefore more than five times more likely to be the victim of a religious hate crime than a Muslim. In the London Borough of Tower Hamlets the Jew is over thirty times more likely to be a victim than a Muslim. Even Islington, proportionately the worst borough for Muslims, the Jew is still more than twice as likely to be a victim as the Muslim.

As a final note, late yesterday evening there was an extreme Anti-Semitic attack in North Manchester. Four young men were brutally attacked at a Metrolink Station. The youngest, for a period, was into a coma according to The Jewish Chronicle. I join in the prayers for his speedy and full recovery.

Kevin Marshall