Trump links crime surge in UK to 'radical Islamic terror'

Rasa - US President Donald Trump has blamed a rise in crime in the UK on what he calls “radical Islamic terror”, but presented no evidence to support his claim.

News ID: 433291

Date: 20 October 2017 - 23:11

RNA - "Just out report: ‘United Kingdom crime rises 13% annually amid spread of Radical Islamic terror.’ Not good, we must keep America safe!”Trump said in a tweet on Friday morning.

The mainstream media and several politicians, like Trump, describe Daesh or al-Qaeda terrorists as “Islamists”, "Jihadists”, or "Islamic" terrorists, which is completely wrong.

Islam has nothing to do with terrorism. Islam, which is a religion of mercy, does not permit any kind of terrorism. Islamic scholars call people who claim they are Muslims but are involved in terrorist activities Takfiris, or Takfiri terrorists.

Trump’s tweet came after the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS), released new data on Wednesday showing the number of crimes recorded annually in England and Wales had passed five million for the first time in ten years.

The figures "reflects a range of factors including continuing improvements to crime recording,” the report said.

According to the report, there was a 13 per cent rise in recorded crimes, with a surge in knife crime, which had increased 26 percent every year. There was also a 19 per cent increase in sexual offences.

“Of the 664 homicides recorded in the year ending June 2017, there were 35 relating to the London and Manchester terror attacks,” the report added.

The figure means five percent of all murders were due to terrorist attacks.

However, Trump's tweet is incorrect as the report stated that the total number of homicides recorded in the year to June 2017 actually fell by 2% compared with the previous year.

The report did not suggest that Islamic terror had played any role in putting the recorded figures up.

Trump has previously mentioned UK terror attacks as a reason to introduce tougher immigration controls.

Britain's opposition Labour Party lawmaker Tulip Siddiq slammed Trump for his claim and called on him to  delete his account.

UK authorities reject Trump’s claim

The UK's Office for National Statistics told The Washington Post on Friday that the study cited by Trump actually shows no link between violent crime and terrorism.

“The simple answer,” a spokesman told the newspaper by phone, “is that our statistical release bulletin yesterday made no link between terrorism and violent crime.”

Another spokesman said in a written statement that the agency explained that police in the UK are responding to growing levels of crime, especially sex crimes which rose 19 percent, due to "significant under-recording" in previous years.

“Today’s figures suggest that the police are dealing with a growing volume of crime,” the statement read.

“While improvements made by police forces in recording crime are still a factor in the increase, we judge that there have been genuine increases in crime — particularly in some of the low incidence but more harmful categories.”

Meanwhile, according to a report released in September, hate crimes  spiked by almost 20 percent in major US cities, after increasing by 5 percent nationally last year, fueled by the election of President Donald Trump, according to a new study.

Police data compiled by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University at San Bernardino showed that the number of hate crimes in 13 US cities with a population of over 250,000 rose to 827 incidents, up 19.9 percent from 690 reported during the same period last year.

Back in September, the US president claimed that his administration had "made more progress in the last nine months" against the Daesh (ISIL) terrorist group than his predecessor, Barack Obama.

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