On a cold October night in Walsall, England, last year, John Ashby followed a British Indian woman off a bus, broke into her house and then brutally raped and beat her.
During the attack, Mr. Ashby, 32, told the woman, “You are a Muslim, I know” — though she was, in fact, Sikh — and he ordered her to perform acts to degrade the Islamic faith, prosecutors said at his sentencing last month. Mr. Ashby pleaded guilty to rape, to religiously aggravated assault and to other crimes and was sentenced to life in prison.
The assault was one of a rising number of racial and religious attacks in recent years in Britain, where police data shows that antisemitic, anti-Muslim and racially motivated offenses have all increased. That reflects a broader trend in Europe, where countries including Spain have experienced anti-migrant riots and a recent election in France became a flashpoint for racial tensions.
Chief Constable Mark Hobrough, who leads the British police’s efforts to tackle hate crime, said in an interview that he thinks the problem has been fueled in part by online disinformation, combined with global instability and increasingly divisive political rhetoric.
He “passionately believes” in freedom of expression, he said, but warned of a “pyramid of hate” in which online vitriol and incitement “generate an acceptance” for real-world abuse.
Among recent attacks, a neo-Nazi teenager attempted to behead an Iranian Kurdish immigrant with an ax outside a barbershop in Bristol, southwestern England, in August. In another, also in Bristol, a 9-year-old girl was shot with an air gun in September in what the police said was a racially motivated assault. In October, a man who had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State attacked a synagogue in Manchester, in northwestern England, leading to the deaths of two Jewish men. Two days later, an arson attack was carried out on a mosque in Peacehaven, on the southern English coast.
Last month, two Jews were stabbed in Golders Green, North London, and this week, a Jewish man in the same area said that he was kicked and beaten by a group of men who asked, “Are you Jewish?”
Religiously motivated crimes in England and Wales rose above 10,000 in the year ending March 2025, the latest period available. Almost 4,500 of those offenses targeted Muslims, while about 2,900 targeted Jews. (The smaller Jewish population in Britain means that equates to a far higher proportional rate.)
Racial hate crime also rose by 6 percent year on year, according to other government figures, with South Asian and Black people the most likely to be targeted.
Sunder Katwala, director of British Future, a research organization in London that conducts polling on public attitudes, said that there had been a “significant change in the atmosphere” of how Britons talk about race over the past three years.
Mr. Katwala said that a lot of progress against overt racism and racial attacks was made in Britain during and after the 1990s, when the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence, a Black teenager in London, galvanized efforts to combat prejudice across society.
But he said that “strong social norms” — the consensus around what kind of language and behavior is acceptable in mainstream society — were now being undermined and that racists were becoming more “disinhibited” both in person and online.
Changes to content moderation policies on the social media site X after Elon Musk’s takeover in 2022 had contributed to an increase in the “visibility and the normalization of overt racial slurs,” Mr. Katwala said. X did not respond to a request for comment.
Law enforcement, legislators and extremism scholars have for years warned that algorithms on social media platforms amplify hateful and outrageous content because it drives attention.
At the same time, growing resentment over a rise in immigration before and after Brexit, combined with a cost of living crisis, has led to an increasingly hostile climate for asylum seekers in Britain, and in some places stoked violent protests against their government-funded accommodation.
Chief Constable Hobrough said that he had dealt with multiple cases in which false rumors spread online that the government was moving groups of asylum seekers into particular areas, leading to threats, abuse and protests against people on the basis of their skin color or appearance. “The biggest challenge I have is misinformation and disinformation,” he said, “and sadly that is a dynamic threat that is very hard to prepare for.”
He pointed to an episode in Wales in August, when a racially diverse group of teenage Scouts visiting an activity center were filmed by local residents who wrongly thought the site was being used as a migrant camp.
In another case, Chief Constable Hobrough said that after a Black church group in northern England moved its regular Sunday family picnic to a different park, a group of people wearing balaclavas and hoods attacked them and threw bricks. The assault, which one of the suspects is accused of inciting on Facebook, left one victim in a hospital.
“They were just an African church of U.K. residents going to one of their local parks to be together,” he said.
Last month, violent protests broke out in Epsom, a town southwest of London, after a woman reported being gang-raped outside a church. Rumors that the perpetrators were migrants were amplified by far-right influencers online. Protesters then attempted to find buildings supposedly housing asylum seekers in the area.
After an investigation, including examining CCTV footage, interviewing witnesses and forensic tests, the police concluded that no sexual offense had taken place and said the woman had made “a confused report” after a head injury.
Chief Constable Hobrough said that he was concerned that an “emboldening” of expressions of hatred and racial attacks would continue if “community cohesion” did not improve.
“I thought we were moving forward as a society,” he said. “But over recent times, it does feel like we’re stepping backward.”
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