Attacks upon Mosques and Islamic Institutions in the UK

Published June 14, 2022
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New report shows 35% of Mosques experience a religiously motivated attack at least once a year.

  • Almost half of the Mosques or Islamic institutions we surveyed have experienced religiously motivated attacks in the last 3 years
  • Just 4% of Mosques secured funding for the Places of Worship (POW) scheme

Attacks on Mosques rose to peak attention after the Christchurch shootings of March 2019 in New Zealand. A far-right white supremacist entered both Al Noor Mosque and Linwood Islamic Centre, both mosques in the Christchurch area, killing 51 people and injuring 40. What followed in the UK, almost immediately, were several attacks on Mosques including one man attacking 5 different Mosques across Birmingham. 

Since then, we have continued to see several attacks occur against Mosques over the past few years. Even amidst the pandemic, we have witnessed attacks such as the arson attack against Didsbury Mosque in Manchester, and the stones and eggs pelted at worshippers of Ilford Islamic Centre. Recently, over the blessed month of Ramadan, a mosque was attacked by a group armed with bottles and hockey sticks.

Home Office data showed that between March 2020 and March 2021, under half (45%) of all religious hate crime offences were targeted against Muslims, a figure that has been largely consistent in recent years, and much greater than for any other religious community.

Since part of these attacks are towards places of worship, it is imperative that we have data on the scale of the problem of hate crimes and security threats directed towards mosques, to better inform government and policy makers on how to address this.

Muslim Census has collaborated with MEND, a not-for-profit organisation that helps empower British Muslims within local communities to be more actively involved in British media and politics, to survey mosques and Islamic institutions across the UK to understand the hate crimes and security threats, and what measures they have taken to address these.

The findings are the first of its kind documenting hate crimes faced by mosques and Islamic institutions and the findings are hugely concerning. To read the full report, or the dataset, please click below.

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