The pledge by the Home Office comes amid a surge in anti-Muslim hate incidents in the UK since the outbreak of the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza last October.

“Anti-Muslim hatred has absolutely no place in our society,” home secretary James Cleverly said in a statement. “We will not let events in the Middle East be used as an excuse to justify abuse against British Muslims.”

Tell Mama, a group monitoring hate crimes against the Muslim community, said last month that it had recorded 2,010 hate incidents in the four months since Hamas’s deadly attack against Israel on Oct 7.

It was the largest recorded number of cases in a four-month period, the group said, and up from 600 incidents over the same period in 2022-2023, a rise of 335%. They included abusive behaviour, threats, assaults, vandalism, discrimination, hate speech, and anti-Muslim literature.

Of the total number, Tell Mama said 1,109 of the reported incidents occurred online. Women were the target in 65% of cases, the group added.

A Jewish charity, the Community Security Trust (CST), has also reported a sharp rise in antisemitic incidents in Britain after Hamas’s attack.

The charity, which monitors antisemitism in Britain, recorded 4,103 “anti-Jewish hate incidents” last year, its highest annual tally since 1984. That represented a 147% increase in the 1,662 incidents recorded in 2022.

In February, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak pledged to provide more than £70 million over the next four years to protect Jewish community sites.