Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to tackle misogyny and racism experienced by Muslim women.

This government recognises the discrimination and intolerance faced by Muslim communities. We have some of the strongest legislation in the world to tackle hate crime and, where groups incite racial hatred or are engaged in racially or religiously motivated criminal activity, we would expect them to be prosecuted.

The Government has taken steps to combat anti-Muslim Hatred through supporting Tell MAMA (Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks) with just over £2.8m between 2016 and 2020 to monitor and combat anti-Muslim hatred.

In addition, the Places of Worship protective security funding scheme, which provides security measures for mosques and other places of worship, has been allocated £3.2m for 2020-21, double what was awarded last year.

We also funded a national public awareness hate crime campaign in 2018 and 2019 which includes a specific example of anti-Muslim hatred to make clear the Government’s position that such incidents are unacceptable and are a crime.

The Home Office have also funded specific locally targeted projects including through the Building Stronger Britain Together programme tackling both the far right and perceptions of Islamophobia