If one listens to the political and media classes there have now been five days of non-stop coverage of Islamophobia which, we are told, is the big issue we must deal with. Of course, it is wrong and must be condemned but here are a few statistics for you to ponder. Let us start with anti-semitic incidents recorded in the wake of the October 7 pogrom.
According to the Community Support Trust there were 4,103 incidents in 2023 of which two thirds came after October 7 so in the last quarter of 2023 there were almost 2,700 incidents against UK Jews. Meanwhile, the organization Tell Mama reports a surge in Islamophobic incidents post October 7 saying that there were 2,010 Islamophobic incidents between 7 October and 7 February – a steep rise from the 600 it recorded for the same period the year previously. In other words, the Jews suffered 35% more incidents in the three months after October 7 than the Muslims suffered in the four months afterwards.
Yet if one listens to Baroness Warsi and other such folks the issue we must tackle as a highest priority is Islamophobia.
There is another point to make. There are around 300,000 Jews in the UK. There are 3.9 million Muslims. Thus, as a Jew you had a 0.9% chance of suffering an antisemitic incident in the last three months of 2023 whereas as a Muslim your chances of suffering an attack in the four months after October 7 was 0.05%. As a Jew you were 24 times more likely to suffer hatred as a result of your faith than you were as a Muslim.
None of this excuses any of this faith based hatred but it also puts into context the idea that the biggest scourge we must address is Islamophobia.
But there is another statistic you may wish to ponder. According to the security services it has 43,000 folks on its terror watch list and nine in ten of those are Islamists. Naturally we are repeatedly told by the political and media class that the fastest growing threat is from the far right, as you can see in this BBC report, but the biggest threat is from Islamists.
The last census showed that there were 3.9million Muslims in the UK with a very young demographic so there may be two million adults. And that means that c2%, one in fifty, adult Muslims is on a secret service terror watch list. Now it maybe that the spooks are being overly cautious but that number is, whichever way, you look at it horrific. Using the spooks data the percent of non Muslim Brits on its watch list is just 0.008% or 1 in every 12,500 folks.
Clearly saying most terror threats is Muslims is NOT the same as saying most Muslims are terror threats as they are not. But, is it not possible that the frightening numbers of Muslims who, the spooks, say are terror threats, might, in part, explain why islamophobia is a problem?
Instead of simply demanding action be taking to tackle Islamophobia maybe, if the Muslim community took ownership of one reason why some non-Muslims fear Muslims, the problem might be reduced?
Am I allowed to publish hard data and ask questions? I suspect that many folks will deny me the right to do that and again, the Westminister and media class GroupThink imposed clampdown on rational and fact-based discussion generates not harmony but more seething dissent.