Lisaji,
The number of mosques in UK is far more than 2x the number of temples in UK. Since the funding is for properties this is down to that. Interestingly the mosques I see are lavish affairs, with far more resources than what temples haave (Iskon types excluded). These were funded by myriad GCC grants - so could afford security on their own….
Indo-UK News & Discussions- June 2017
Re: Indo-UK News & Discussions- June 2017
Ji, respectfully, £40 million is not twice £5 million. Even that £5 million to be shared out.
Re: Indo-UK News & Discussions- June 2017
Just FYI, this is how AI sees it
The disparity in these figures reflects a risk-based approach to government spending. Rather than distributing funds equally across all religious groups based on population size, the Home Office allocates security funding based on assessed threat levels, the nature of the security required, and the historical volume of hate crimes.
Here is a breakdown of why the numbers for Jewish and Muslim communities are significantly higher than those for other faith groups.
1. Threat Assessments and Hate Crime Statistics
The primary driver for security funding is the data provided by the police and intelligence services regarding the risk of targeted attacks.
Disproportionate Targeting: Historically, and particularly since October 2023, there has been a significant and sustained surge in recorded antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents.
Intelligence Monitoring: Organizations like the Community Security Trust (CST) and Tell MAMA provide the government with granular data on threats. When the "threat to life" or risk of terrorism is assessed as higher for specific communities, the funding is scaled to meet that specific danger.
2. Guarding vs. Equipment (Revenue vs. Capital)
One of the biggest reasons for the price gap is what the money pays for.
Jewish and Muslim Schemes: A large portion of the £28.4m and £40m grants goes toward security guards. Human personnel are an "ongoing revenue cost"—they must be paid hourly, every day. This is incredibly expensive compared to one-off costs.
Places of Worship Scheme (Other Faiths): This scheme has traditionally focused on capital grants—physical hardware like CCTV, reinforced doors, and alarms. Once a camera is installed, it doesn't require a monthly salary, which keeps the total budget for this scheme lower.
3. Institutional Density and Vulnerability
The funding is also allocated based on the number of "high-risk" targets within a community.
Scheme Primary Targets Security Intensity
Jewish Community Schools, Synagogues, Centers High (Guard-heavy due to school safety)
Muslim Community Mosques, Schools, Centers High (Increased focus on mosque perimeter security)
Other Faiths Churches, Gurdwaras, Temples Variable (Often focused on preventing theft/vandalism)
Jewish schools, in particular, have required full-time security guards for decades due to the global history of attacks on Jewish educational institutions. This adds a massive recurring cost that other faith schools generally haven't faced to the same degree.
4. The "Uplift" Logic
The text mentions a £10 million uplift for Jewish and Muslim schemes compared to a £1.5 million uplift for others. This is a reactive measure:
Following international conflicts or domestic tensions, the Home Office identifies which communities are most likely to experience "reprisal" attacks or a spike in local harassment.
The government prioritizes the "uplift" where the statistical spike in hate crimes is most acute.
Summary
In short, the funding isn't a reflection of the "value" of one faith over another, but a reflection of the cost of mitigation. Because Jewish and Muslim sites are currently assessed to require physical security personnel (guards) in addition to hardware (CCTV), their budgets are exponentially higher than schemes that primarily fund locks and alarms.
The disparity in these figures reflects a risk-based approach to government spending. Rather than distributing funds equally across all religious groups based on population size, the Home Office allocates security funding based on assessed threat levels, the nature of the security required, and the historical volume of hate crimes.
Here is a breakdown of why the numbers for Jewish and Muslim communities are significantly higher than those for other faith groups.
1. Threat Assessments and Hate Crime Statistics
The primary driver for security funding is the data provided by the police and intelligence services regarding the risk of targeted attacks.
Disproportionate Targeting: Historically, and particularly since October 2023, there has been a significant and sustained surge in recorded antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents.
Intelligence Monitoring: Organizations like the Community Security Trust (CST) and Tell MAMA provide the government with granular data on threats. When the "threat to life" or risk of terrorism is assessed as higher for specific communities, the funding is scaled to meet that specific danger.
2. Guarding vs. Equipment (Revenue vs. Capital)
One of the biggest reasons for the price gap is what the money pays for.
Jewish and Muslim Schemes: A large portion of the £28.4m and £40m grants goes toward security guards. Human personnel are an "ongoing revenue cost"—they must be paid hourly, every day. This is incredibly expensive compared to one-off costs.
Places of Worship Scheme (Other Faiths): This scheme has traditionally focused on capital grants—physical hardware like CCTV, reinforced doors, and alarms. Once a camera is installed, it doesn't require a monthly salary, which keeps the total budget for this scheme lower.
3. Institutional Density and Vulnerability
The funding is also allocated based on the number of "high-risk" targets within a community.
Scheme Primary Targets Security Intensity
Jewish Community Schools, Synagogues, Centers High (Guard-heavy due to school safety)
Muslim Community Mosques, Schools, Centers High (Increased focus on mosque perimeter security)
Other Faiths Churches, Gurdwaras, Temples Variable (Often focused on preventing theft/vandalism)
Jewish schools, in particular, have required full-time security guards for decades due to the global history of attacks on Jewish educational institutions. This adds a massive recurring cost that other faith schools generally haven't faced to the same degree.
4. The "Uplift" Logic
The text mentions a £10 million uplift for Jewish and Muslim schemes compared to a £1.5 million uplift for others. This is a reactive measure:
Following international conflicts or domestic tensions, the Home Office identifies which communities are most likely to experience "reprisal" attacks or a spike in local harassment.
The government prioritizes the "uplift" where the statistical spike in hate crimes is most acute.
Summary
In short, the funding isn't a reflection of the "value" of one faith over another, but a reflection of the cost of mitigation. Because Jewish and Muslim sites are currently assessed to require physical security personnel (guards) in addition to hardware (CCTV), their budgets are exponentially higher than schemes that primarily fund locks and alarms.
Re: Indo-UK News & Discussions- June 2017
Big picture look: the export of the Israel-Palestine conflict has been very costly to every country that accepted the import.
Re: Indo-UK News & Discussions- June 2017
here's what "my" AI says about this:
£40 Million for Mosques, £5 Million for Everyone Else: The Numbers the Government Hopes You Won't Compare
The UK government's announcement of £73.4 million in "protective security" funding for faith communities sounds, on the surface, like an even-handed commitment to religious safety. It is anything but.
Strip away the ministerial platitudes and look at the actual allocation: mosques and Muslim community sites receive up to £40 million — more than half the entire pot. Jewish sites receive £28.4 million. And every other faith in the country — Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, and all others — splits £5 million between them.
To put that in perspective: there are roughly 27,000 Christian churches in England alone, over 800 Hindu temples, and hundreds of Gurdwaras. All of them, collectively, are entitled to compete for the same £5 million — an amount that is one-eighth of what mosques receive. Per site, the disparity is staggering. There are approximately 1,750 mosques in the UK. That works out to roughly £22,800 per mosque. For Christian churches, if every one of them applied, it would be about £185 each. That isn't a rounding error — it's a policy choice that reveals whose safety the government considers a priority and whose it considers an afterthought.
The government frames the £1.5 million uplift for non-Muslim, non-Jewish faiths as "record" funding. This is technically true in the same way that going from almost nothing to slightly more than almost nothing is a record. The Places of Worship scheme previously sat at £3.5 million. It has now been raised to £5 million. Meanwhile, the mosque scheme alone jumped by tens of millions. The government is hoping the word "record" does enough heavy lifting that nobody checks the arithmetic.
And the arithmetic raises uncomfortable questions. The article itself states that 45% of religious hate crimes target Muslims. That means 55% target everyone else — yet "everyone else" receives less than 7% of the funding. If hate crime statistics are the basis for allocation, the numbers don't support a ratio this extreme. If it's based on threat severity, the government has provided no evidence or risk assessment to justify why a Gurdwara or Hindu temple facing threats deserves a fraction of the protection afforded to a mosque.
Sikh and Hindu communities in the UK have faced documented threats, vandalism, and targeted violence for years. Attacks on temples, communal intimidation, and hate crimes against visibly religious Sikhs are not hypothetical — they are ongoing. Yet these communities are lumped into a catch-all "other faiths" category and told to apply through a separate scheme with a fraction of the budget and an application window that "will open later this year." Mosques, by contrast, can apply on a rolling basis directly with the Home Office. Even the access to funding is unequal.
The structural message is clear: some faiths receive dedicated, named, generously funded schemes with direct government access. Others receive a shared, underfunded pool with bureaucratic delays. The government has created a two-tier system of religious protection and is presenting it as inclusivity.
None of this is to argue that mosques don't deserve protection — they plainly do. But a government that claims "religious persecution and intolerance has no place in Britain" while allocating security funding on a scale this lopsided is telling communities exactly where they sit in the hierarchy of concern.
£40 Million for Mosques, £5 Million for Everyone Else: The Numbers the Government Hopes You Won't Compare
The UK government's announcement of £73.4 million in "protective security" funding for faith communities sounds, on the surface, like an even-handed commitment to religious safety. It is anything but.
Strip away the ministerial platitudes and look at the actual allocation: mosques and Muslim community sites receive up to £40 million — more than half the entire pot. Jewish sites receive £28.4 million. And every other faith in the country — Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, and all others — splits £5 million between them.
To put that in perspective: there are roughly 27,000 Christian churches in England alone, over 800 Hindu temples, and hundreds of Gurdwaras. All of them, collectively, are entitled to compete for the same £5 million — an amount that is one-eighth of what mosques receive. Per site, the disparity is staggering. There are approximately 1,750 mosques in the UK. That works out to roughly £22,800 per mosque. For Christian churches, if every one of them applied, it would be about £185 each. That isn't a rounding error — it's a policy choice that reveals whose safety the government considers a priority and whose it considers an afterthought.
The government frames the £1.5 million uplift for non-Muslim, non-Jewish faiths as "record" funding. This is technically true in the same way that going from almost nothing to slightly more than almost nothing is a record. The Places of Worship scheme previously sat at £3.5 million. It has now been raised to £5 million. Meanwhile, the mosque scheme alone jumped by tens of millions. The government is hoping the word "record" does enough heavy lifting that nobody checks the arithmetic.
And the arithmetic raises uncomfortable questions. The article itself states that 45% of religious hate crimes target Muslims. That means 55% target everyone else — yet "everyone else" receives less than 7% of the funding. If hate crime statistics are the basis for allocation, the numbers don't support a ratio this extreme. If it's based on threat severity, the government has provided no evidence or risk assessment to justify why a Gurdwara or Hindu temple facing threats deserves a fraction of the protection afforded to a mosque.
Sikh and Hindu communities in the UK have faced documented threats, vandalism, and targeted violence for years. Attacks on temples, communal intimidation, and hate crimes against visibly religious Sikhs are not hypothetical — they are ongoing. Yet these communities are lumped into a catch-all "other faiths" category and told to apply through a separate scheme with a fraction of the budget and an application window that "will open later this year." Mosques, by contrast, can apply on a rolling basis directly with the Home Office. Even the access to funding is unequal.
The structural message is clear: some faiths receive dedicated, named, generously funded schemes with direct government access. Others receive a shared, underfunded pool with bureaucratic delays. The government has created a two-tier system of religious protection and is presenting it as inclusivity.
None of this is to argue that mosques don't deserve protection — they plainly do. But a government that claims "religious persecution and intolerance has no place in Britain" while allocating security funding on a scale this lopsided is telling communities exactly where they sit in the hierarchy of concern.
Re: Indo-UK News & Discussions- June 2017
State of free speech in the UK.
Re: Indo-UK News & Discussions- June 2017
Funding for guards or hardware?
Re: Indo-UK News & Discussions- June 2017
^^Vayutuvanji, At the beginning of this discussion, everyone was clearly told by the Speaker,
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2 ... 95D4C65A05
"Although certain criticisms may be made about the Government collectively, “Erskine May” makes it clear—in paragraph 21.24—that any accusations against individual Members about lying or misleading the House may be made only on a substantive motion; they may not be made as part of an exchange on a statement. The House rule on this is in place to ensure that Members focus on the substantive matters under discussion. If a debate is needed about matters of individual conduct, that must be drawn in the proper terms with notice. I encourage all Members to engage in respectful debate, as our constituents would expect."
ie, that the accusation of Liar would not be acceptable. She transgressed and was correctly named, ie once your name is take, you are obliged to leave the house. You cannot in Parliament call someone a Liar without explicitly proving it.
She is separately an unpleasant politician, a Mirpuri!
https://x.com/zarahsultana/status/1441423860675399688
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2 ... 95D4C65A05
"Although certain criticisms may be made about the Government collectively, “Erskine May” makes it clear—in paragraph 21.24—that any accusations against individual Members about lying or misleading the House may be made only on a substantive motion; they may not be made as part of an exchange on a statement. The House rule on this is in place to ensure that Members focus on the substantive matters under discussion. If a debate is needed about matters of individual conduct, that must be drawn in the proper terms with notice. I encourage all Members to engage in respectful debate, as our constituents would expect."
ie, that the accusation of Liar would not be acceptable. She transgressed and was correctly named, ie once your name is take, you are obliged to leave the house. You cannot in Parliament call someone a Liar without explicitly proving it.
She is separately an unpleasant politician, a Mirpuri!
https://x.com/zarahsultana/status/1441423860675399688
Re: Indo-UK News & Discussions- June 2017
@Lisa ji, thanks for the correction. Her Wikipedia bio page states that her parents are British Mirpuri and from Azad Kashmir!!!
Pakistanayat is in her blood (though her parents are from India).
Pakistanayat is in her blood (though her parents are from India).
Re: Indo-UK News & Discussions- June 2017
King Charles delivers HISTORIC address to US Congress
King Charles III addresses Congress, touching on the WHCA Dinner shooting and the U.S.-U.K relationship.
King Charles III addresses Congress, touching on the WHCA Dinner shooting and the U.S.-U.K relationship.
Re: Indo-UK News & Discussions- June 2017
As an FYI. I don't understand the "Unknown" category. "Perceived targeted religion" -- people targeting Muslims confuse brown people that are Hindus or others as Muslims - hence "perceived". So those 4,478 are not all Muslims.
Official Statistics
Hate crime, England and Wales, year ending March 2025
Published 9 October 2025
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistic ... march-2025
Numbers of religious hate crimes recorded by the police by the perceived targeted religion and per 10,000 population
Official Statistics
Hate crime, England and Wales, year ending March 2025
Published 9 October 2025
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistic ... march-2025
Numbers of religious hate crimes recorded by the police by the perceived targeted religion and per 10,000 population
Code: Select all
Buddhist 28 1
Christian 502 0
Hindu. 182 2
Jewish. 2,873 106
Muslim. 4,478 12
Sikh. 259 5
Other. 612 18
Unknown 1,075 [u]