By Maira Butt
A Home Office report has revealed a 25 per cent increase in religious hate crime in England and Wales for the year ending March, during which the Israel-Hamas conflict began.
A total of 10,484 religious hate crimes were reported to police, up from 8,370 the previous year, and the highest number since hate crime records began in 2012. The increase is due to a rise in offences against Jewish and Muslim communities.
The report defines religious hate crime as driven by hostility against “a person’s religion or perceived religion, or any religious group including those who have no faith in a theology”.
The report says offences against Jews more than doubled: “There were 3,282 religious hate crimes targeted at Jewish people in the year ending March 2024, more than double the number recorded the previous year (1,543). These offences accounted for 33 per cent of all religious hate crimes in the last year, compared with 20 per cent of all religious hate crime in the previous year.”
Religious hate crimes targeting Muslims since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas conflict also increased, with 3,866 offences in the latest year, up 13 per cent from 3,432 recorded the previous year. In the year to March 2024, almost two in five (38 per cent) of religious hate crimes were against Muslims.
Categories of crime against Jews and Muslims are set out, with the largest being public fear, alarm or distress. Others are criminal damage and arson, malicious communications, assaults with and without injury and stalking and harassment. Muslims suffered more assaults and harassment cases than the Jewish population.
It notes that the Jewish community had a proportionally higher number of police-reported hate crimes, when compared with the population of its members. “In the past year, there were 121 religious hate crimes per 10,000 population targeted at Jewish people, the highest rate for any religious group, and up from 57 per 10,000 the previous year,” it reported.
In a separate set of statistics, the Jewish charity the Community Security Trust reported 5,583 incidents since the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023 and the riots from 30 September 2024. It said it was the highest total of any 12-month period and was three times that of the previous year, when 1,830 events were recorded.
The Home Office report said hate crime targeted at Muslims, accounted for 10 per 10,000 population, up from nine per 10,000 in the previous year.
The charity Tell Mama, which records Islamophobic hate crime, published its own statistics, saying that it had recorded 4,971 such crimes in the period since 7 October, the highest total it had noted in more than 10 years.
The report also collects data on other religious groups that were targeted and shows the difference to the previous year ending in 2023: 702 hate crimes against Christians (up from 609 the previous year), 216 against Sikhs (down from 302), and 193 against Hindus (down from 286). This made a rise of 7 per cent, 2 per cent, and 2 per cent respectively.
“Other religion” had 503 cases over the year, a rate of 14 religious hate crimes per 10,000 population. “No religion” had 196 cases.
The religious hate crime figures are within a wider study of hate crimes recorded by police in England and Wales. A total of 140,561 hate crimes were recorded, defined as “any criminal offence which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice towards someone based on a personal characteristic”. The data is divided into strands, one of which is race hate crime.
The data shows that 70 per cent of all hate crimes were racially motivated, amounting to 98,799 of the total. The figure is a fall of 5 per cent from the previous year when there were 103,625 offences, a decline seen in lower cases of public fear, alarm or distress and malicious communication.
There were falls in the other three strands of police-reported hate crime, with sexual orientation, disability, and transgender hate crimes falling by 8 per cent, 18 per cent, and 2 per cent respectively.
According to the Home Office, the decrease in overall police-recorded hate crimes can be attributed to improvements in crime recording and better identification of what constitutes a hate crime. However, the report warned: “Figures from the police should also not be seen as a good measure of prevalence since not all hate crime is reported to them.” It added: “The figures do, however, provide a good measure of the hate crime-related demand on the police.”
Home secretary Yvette Cooper called the figures “appalling”. “The appalling levels of antisemitic and Islamophobic hate crimes outlined in today’s figures are a stain on our society, and this government will work tirelessly to tackle this toxic hatred wherever it is found,” she said.
“We must not allow events unfolding in the Middle East to play out in increased hatred and tension here on our streets, and those who push this poison — offline or online — must face the full force of the law. The more than doubling of reported antisemitic hate crime and the significant increase in Islamophobic hate crime are very serious.
“We must have zero tolerance for antisemitism, Islamophobia and every other form of heinous hate in Britain, and we back the police in taking strong action against those targeting our communities.”
