The wife of a clergyman beaten up in a faith-hate attack outside his church described the community’s shock and distress yesterday after taking the Palm Sunday service on her husband’s behalf.

Canon Michael Ainsworth is expected to be released from hospital early this week after being attacked 12 days ago in East London.

The attack has led to fears of an increasing number of religiously aggravated attacks on Christian clergy and concerns that the problem is overlooked by police and prosecutors.

Speaking after giving the service at St George’s-in-the-East Church in Shadwell, the Rev Janina Ainsworth, 57, who is also a priest in the Church of England, said that the couple had taken much strength from the support offered from around the country. “There is a lot of shock and distress around the congregation and the area,” she said.

“We’re so grateful for all the messages of support and love from friends and the wider community. Quite clearly, there are mindless individuals in every community under the influence of drink and drugs who will engage in random acts of violence.”

Canon Ainsworth, 57, who was wearing his clerical collar, was punched and kicked by two Asian youths while another shouted religious abuse outside St George’s on March 5. He suffered cuts, bruises and two black eyes. He was discharged from St Bartholomew’s hospital but later readmitted following complications to an injury.

Canon Ainsworth moved to St George’s at the end of last year after his wife was appointed as the first female chief education officer for the Church of England. Mrs Ainsworth said: “Normally community relations here are very good. We have had very strong messages of support from the East London Mosque and Tower Hamlets Mosque, with whom we’ve got good relations.

“Clearly, the Muslim community is very shocked. These individuals were under the influence and this was a random act, but it may well be that some good can come out of it.

“Michael is making a good recovery and he should be back home early next week. He doesn’t want to castigate the whole community, he feels this is an isolated incident.

“We do know that in this area there is no concerted campaign against Christians and Christian buildings.”

The church has been targeted in the past, with bricks thrown through the windows of the 18th-century building. On Good Friday last year, worshippers were showered with glass during a service.

Allan Ramanoop, an Asian member of the parochial church council, said that parishioners were often too scared to challenge the gangs. “I’ve been physically threatened and verbally abused on the steps of the church,” he said. “On one occasion, youths shouted: ‘This should not be a church, this should be a mosque, you should not be here’.

“I just walked away from it – you are too frightened to challenge them.

We have church windows smashed two to three times a month. The youths are antiChristian. It’s terrible what they have done to Canon Ainsworth.”

It was feared that the incident might inflame tension in the area, which is in the heart of Tower Hamlets where more than half the residents are from ethnic minority groups. A third are of Bangladeshi origin.

In January one of the Church of England’s most senior bishops said that Islamic extemists had created “no-go” areas across Britain where it was too dangerous for nonMuslims to enter. The Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, the Church’s only Asian bishop, said that people of a different race or faith face physical attack if they live or work in communities dominated by a strict Muslim ideology.

Worshippers at St George’s suggested that youth thuggery, rather than religious bigotry, may be more to blame.

Thomas Beckett, 50, said: “I have heard that this church is an island in the middle of a Muslim community. But you don’t expect this sort of attack to happen – you don’t expect Muslims to be attacked either.”Michael Saward, 75, the former vicar, said: “Nothing like this has happened in this area before, although I have been attacked in the past so I can understand what he’s going through.

“We have had windows smashed here but we don’t know by who.”

Nick Tolson, a former police officer who set up the National Churchwatch safety scheme, said that there had been an increase in faith hate attacks on clergy.

“The harassment is usually coming from young Asian men – often, but not exclusively, Muslim,” he said. “The police and prosecutors will classify an attack on a mosque or Muslim as a hate crime but not if it is a church or a vicar. These aren’t targeted attacks, they are spontaneous, but [the victims] are being singled out because of their faith and should be dealt with in the same way as other members of the community.”

The Crown Prosecution Service reported last month that cases aggravated by religious factors had fallen by 37.2 per cent, with reports of 27 prosecutions in the past year. In the 23 cases where the religion was known, 17 victims were Muslim, three as Christian, two as Jewish and one as Sikh.

Scotland Yard said that allegations of faith hate crimes had fallen by a half between 2005-06 and 2006-07 to 417.

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