Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- one A victim-centred approach to conceptualising ‘hate crime’
- two The normality of everyday ‘hate crime’
- three The spatial dynamics of everyday ‘hate crime’
- four Tensions in liberalism and the criminalisation of ‘hate’
- five Including victims of ‘hate crime’ in the criminal justice policy process
- six Conclusions: understanding everyday ‘hate crime’
- Appendix A The UK’s ‘hate crime’ laws
- Appendix B The process of ‘hate crime’
- Appendix C Controversy about the extent of the anti-Muslim backlash following the July 2005 London bombings
- Appendix D Ethnic group composition of the London boroughs (2001 Census)
- Appendix E Black and Asian minority ethnic (BME) group population proportions and diversity scores for the London boroughs (1991 and 2001)
- Appendix F Methodology of the evaluation of the London-wide Race Hate Crime Forum
- References
Appendix C - Controversy about the extent of the anti-Muslim backlash following the July 2005 London bombings
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 January 2022
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- one A victim-centred approach to conceptualising ‘hate crime’
- two The normality of everyday ‘hate crime’
- three The spatial dynamics of everyday ‘hate crime’
- four Tensions in liberalism and the criminalisation of ‘hate’
- five Including victims of ‘hate crime’ in the criminal justice policy process
- six Conclusions: understanding everyday ‘hate crime’
- Appendix A The UK’s ‘hate crime’ laws
- Appendix B The process of ‘hate crime’
- Appendix C Controversy about the extent of the anti-Muslim backlash following the July 2005 London bombings
- Appendix D Ethnic group composition of the London boroughs (2001 Census)
- Appendix E Black and Asian minority ethnic (BME) group population proportions and diversity scores for the London boroughs (1991 and 2001)
- Appendix F Methodology of the evaluation of the London-wide Race Hate Crime Forum
- References
Summary
In Chapter Two it was noted that in early August 2005, BBC news reported that there had been a ‘six-fold’ increase in ‘religious hate crimes, mostly against Muslims’ since the bombings and attempted bombings in London in July (BBC News, news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4740015.stm). But the same BBC news item reported some equivocation on the part of Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur. He stated that “there is no doubt that incidents impacting on the Muslim community have increased”, but he was also reported as saying that “the rise was partly due to the fact that faith hate crimes were now recorded separately from other racial incidents”. Echoing this view about the problem of reliability of the police ‘hate crime’ data, Metropolitan Police Authority Chairman Len Duvall reportedly stated that the classification of many previously defined racial incidents as faith incidents had produced a “large percentage increase from a very low base”. To confound the picture even further, the Hindu Forum of Britain claimed in written evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee (Hindu Forum of Britain, 2005) that Hindus and Sikhs were more vulnerable to ‘hate crime’ in London than Muslims following the July 2005 bombings, claiming that ‘Many of the instances of faith hate crime were due to mistaken identity since Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims from the Asian community look alike’. ([Mr] David Winnick MP put it more bluntly at the Home Affairs Select Committee meeting that: ‘Clearly, among certain sorts of thugs in Britain there is no distinction: they are all Pakis, so to speak, in the language of such extremists’, and as Sir Ian Blair, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service, said in his reply: ‘The kind of idiot that attacks a turban attacks a hijab or a yar mulke for that matter’: House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, 2005, Q70.) However, the Commissioner was rather more circumspect on the matter of the extent of incidents against Muslims, reporting that:
… the pattern does not show very much of an increase. We have two categories of reporting: faith hate crime and hate crime. The faith hate crime is almost a new development in the last year, so it has shown a very significant rise.
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- Hate Crime' and the City , pp. 132 - 135Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2008