Vandals have spray-painted Nazi swastikas on a Turkish mosque in Freiburg, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany in March 2017  (Photo: Anadolu Agency)

Harun Nasrullah

Far-right groups carried out 92.5 per cent of all anti-Muslim hate crimes in Germany last year, according to new Government figures released on May 8.

German police began registering anti-Muslim hate crime last January 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.

Far-right extremists or groups carried out 994 of the 1,075 anti-Muslim hate crimes in 2017.

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

The European Union’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.