This is a pretext for the UK’s new religious hatred law. The paradox here is that the religious hatred law will only fuel resentment and lead to an increase in such incidents. From Reuters, with thanks to Anthony:
LONDON (Reuters) – The number of British Muslims who say they experience discrimination has nearly doubled in the past four years, according to a survey.
Some 80 percent of the country’s 1.8 million Muslims say they have been discriminated against because of their faith compared to 45 percent in 2000 and 35 percent in 1999, the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) said on Thursday.
Muslim men are now just as likely as women to experience prejudice — a significant change which the IHRC blamed on an increase in the number of police and security checks carried out on Muslim men since the September 11 attacks in 2001.
White British Muslims report more discrimination than any other ethnic group, suggesting Britons are intolerant of apostates who convert to Islam.
“What’s happened, post 9/11, is that some very deeply rooted prejudices — things that weren’t articulated in the public realm — have found expression,” Arzu Merali, one of the authors of the report, told Reuters.