Emily Winterbotham

A functioning society depends on equality before the law. If crimes are not treated equally and dispassionately by the justice system, we lose trust in democracy and each other. But as sentences begin to be passed on racists who rioted earlier this month, we see once again a blatantly unequal application of the law. Let’s make a couple of obvious comparisons. One was highlighted this week by the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi). Had those sentenced for their part in the riots this week – who heeded the calls of racist organisers and rampaged through England’s cities – been Muslims inspired by Islamists, they are likely to have been prosecuted as terrorists, potentially facing much longer sentences. Assaulting people in the name of Islam appears to be treated as a far graver crime than assaulting people in the cause of Islamophobia.

The UK has a “two-tier approach” to extremism that fails to treat far-right attacks as seriously as Islamist ones, a leading thinktank has said... Written by Rusi’s acting director of the terrorism and conflict research group, Dr Jessica White, the Rusi research fellow Claudia Wallner and its director of terrorism and conflict studies, Emily Winterbotham, it calls for the threat from the far right to be redefined.

We are seeing a massive escalation in Islamophobia and, in particular, antisemitism,” Emily Winterbotham, director of the terrorism and conflict program at London’s Royal United Services Institute, told Arab News. We’ve also seen a 12-fold increase in hateful social media content referred to specialist police officers of the Counter Terrorism Internet Referral Unit,” said Winterbotham. “This is primarily antisemitic content and from users not previously on police radar.”