By Ayhan Simsek

BERLIN (AA): German police recorded 1,075 Islamophobic crimes in 2017, according to new government figures announced on Tuesday.

Far-right extremists or groups carried out some 994 attacks against Muslims and mosques, which made up 92.5 percent of all Islamophobic crimes, the report by the Interior Ministry said.

Anti-Muslim crimes included physical assault, threatening letters, hate speech and spraying Nazi-themed graffiti and attacking mosques.

Last January, police began registering Islamophobic crimes under a special category, after calls by the country’s Muslim community to take more serious measures against the growing number of anti-Muslim hate crimes.

Germany, a country of 81.8 million people, has the second largest Muslim population in Western Europe after France.

Among the country’s nearly 4.7 million Muslims, 3 million are of Turkish origin. Many of them are second or third-generations of Turkish families who migrated to Germany in the 1960s.

The EU’s largest economy has witnessed growing Islamophobia and hatred of migrants in recent years triggered by propaganda from far-right and populist parties, which have exploited fears over the refugee crisis and terrorism.

[Archive photo:  Mosque in Frieberg vandalised with Nazi symbols. Photograph by AA]