RELIGIOUS hate crimes soared by almost 600 per cent in London as people attacked mosques and insulted Muslims after the suicide bomb attacks.

Scotland Yard figures released yesterday show that 269 offences motivated by religious hatred have been reported since the July 7 bombings compared with only 40 in the same period last year.

Britain’s most senior Asian police officer said that the incidents were seriously affecting Muslims. Tarique Ghaffur, Assistant Commissioner at the Metropolitan Police, said: “There is no doubt that incidents impacting on the Muslim community have increased.”

Most of the incidents were low-level abuse or minor assaults but they had a great “emotional impact”, he said.

Mr Ghaffur backed Hazel Blears, the Home Office Minister, in the row over the stopping and searching of Asians after the terrorist attacks. He said that stop-and-search operations must not be based on racial profiling.

The minister and the senior police officer were seeking to reassure the Muslim community after Ian Johnston, Chief Constable of the British Transport Police, suggested that his officers would be concentrating on particular racial groups and would not “waste time searching old white ladies”.

Ms Blears said that the fight against terrorism depended on the willingness of minority communities to co-operate with the police. Asked if she accepted the use of racial profiling by police, she told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: “I have never, ever endorsed that. I don’t think you should be ruling out anybody in how you exercise stop-and-search powers.”

But last night David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary and the favourite to be the next Conservative Party leader, said that Britain’s security depended on Muslims integrating better into mainstream society and showing a willingness “not simply to condemn terror . . . but to confront it.”

He echoed the view of Trevor Phillips, the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, that it was time to move away from “outdated” multiculturalism. Britain should instead look to the United States “where pride in the nation’s values is much more prevalent among minorities”.

• It emerged yesterday that two Asian men were attacked and bombarded with racial abuse in Edinburgh on Friday evening. The two men, aged 18 and 20, were parking their car when a group of around ten men began taunting the Asians about their race and made reference to the events in London. One of the group began kicking the car, denting it, and another man produced a hammer and threw it through the car window, smashing the glass and hitting the passenger on the shoulder.

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