The UK government has declined to say whether it will increase funding to protect Muslim communities despite a series of anti-Muslim attacks and a record £250 million security package announced for Britain's Jewish community, telling The New Arab it is instead focused on existing measures.
The response comes after police arrested 12 people across England on Monday over a suspected far-right terror plot targeting a gathering attended by thousands of Muslims at a country house in Suffolk, the latest in a string of anti-Muslim incidents in the UK.
In response to questions from The New Arab on whether ministers planned to introduce additional protections or funding for British Muslims similar to those announced for Jewish communities, the Home Office pointed to existing schemes but did not indicate that further resources would be allocated.
"Muslims in the UK face appalling levels of religious hate crime. It's crucial that they not only are safe but feel safe," a Home Office spokesperson told The New Arab .
"This government has increased funding for protective security at mosques, Muslim faith schools and community centres to record levels – up to £40 million in 2026-27," the spokesperson said, referring to funding announced in February, before the recent surge in anti-Muslim incidents.
The spokesperson added that the Home Office was "implementing a number of changes in order to speed up the processing of applications to the Protective Security for Mosques Scheme".
The response followed the government's announcement on Monday of its "largest-ever investment" of more than £250 million to strengthen security for Britain's Jewish communities amid rising antisemitism.
The arrests over the alleged far-right plot targeting Muslims come against a backdrop of growing concern over anti-Muslim hatred in Britain.
Recent incidents include the attempted murder of three Muslim men in Edinburgh in June and anti-immigrant riots in Belfast the same month.
By 26 June, Amnesty International warned that Islamophobic attacks had reached "emergency levels", and urged the government to take urgent action.
However, Muslims in the UK have expressed concerns that Islamophobia is not being treated with equal importance by the government — a sentiment captured by Leicester South MP Shockat Adam in a question to Prime Minister Keir Starmer last month.
"When a Sikh woman was raped in Walsall, the perpetrator repeatedly called her an 'effing Muslim Bitch', whilst there was no outcry from the minister in the dispatch box, no outcry from the members of this chamber who openly call out these matters when the perpetrators are of a different colour," Adam said.
"When we had the Unite the Kingdom march calling openly for the expulsion of Muslims in this country, there was no ministerial statement condemning such statements," the MP noted.
"When [...] we had five members of the Muslim community stabbed on the streets of Edinburgh, there was no ministerial statement of condemnation, no cobra meeting, no solidarity," he continued, in what appeared to be a comparison to the government's proactive response to recent attacks on Jewish communities.
Outgoing Premier Starmer has himself been accused of mishandling complaints of Islamophobia within the Labour Party. The 2022 Forde Report - commissioned by Starmer - concluded that the party was "in effect operating a hierarchy of racism or of discrimination".
Months after its publication, the report's lead, Martin Forde KC, said the party had not fully engaged on the charge that anti-black racism and Islamophobia were not being taken as seriously as antisemitism.
Islamophobia 'downplayed'
A recent analysis by the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM) of coverage surrounding the conviction of neo-Nazi Alfie Coleman, who was jailed for plotting a gun attack targeting a mosque and London's Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan, found that 67% of headlines led with "neo-Nazi jailed" or "neo-Nazi guilty", while references to Muslims as the intended victims were frequently buried within articles or omitted altogether.
"Public understanding of Islamophobia is shaped in large part by how it is represented in the media. When anti-Muslim prejudice is consistently minimised, disputed or treated as less serious than other forms of racism, it becomes harder for the public and policymakers to recognise its scale and impact," CfMM director Rizwana Hamid told The New Arab.
Hamid added that CfMM studies have repeatedly found patterns in which Muslims are disproportionately associated with extremism and threats, while anti-Muslim hatred is downplayed, questioned, or "framed as a matter of political controversy rather than a lived reality".
"Media narratives do not determine government policy, but they do influence the wider public conversation in which policy is made. If anti-Muslim hatred is not consistently recognised as a serious form of prejudice, there is a risk that the security concerns of Muslim communities will receive less sustained public and political attention than they warrant."