“Hating Muslims” is a report on hate crimes whose perpetrators deliberately target Muslims. During the five-year period covered by the report, the hate crimes examined include several terrorist attacks.
Øyvind Strømmen
An English Defense League demonstration in Newcastle. Photo: Gavin Lynn, under a Creative Commons BY 2.0 license.
The report – based on open source research carried out by Hate Speech International – shows that:
- Vandalism against mosques is a quite common, and possibly increasing, transnational trend.
- What we have called “pork attacks” – in which perpetrators use pork meat in an attempt to desecrate mosques, Muslim community centres or proposed mosque sites have taken place in at least the following countries: The United States, Canada, Australia, Russia, France, Spain, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Greece, Bulgaria, Iceland, Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark and the Netherlands, Switzerland and Belgium. It is likely that similar examples can also be found in other countries.
- There have been at least 45 reported arson attacks against mosques in Europe and North America between 2010 and 2014 (including one on the night to 1. January 2015). A number of these have proven or likely connections to racist and / or anti-Muslim ideology.
- The definition of and data recording of hate crimes differ greatly from country to country, and in the U.S. also from state to state. This makes comparative analysis of statistics challenging if not impossible. It also prevents decision makers from relying on hard data in their attempts to draw up reasonable policy responses.
- Hate crimes against Muslims tend to spike immediately following terror attacks committed by militant Islamist groups, illustrating the phenomenon of cumulative extremism.
You can download the report in PDF format, or read it below.
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