At least 187 anti-Muslim crimes were committed in the third quarter of 2019, according to the German government, which issued a report on the numbers following a request filed by a leftist group in parliament.

However, the number is expected to increase given that previous figures in the first and second quarters had shown a rise. Twenty-five of the attacks directly targeted mosques or places of worship.

The first report on anti-Muslim attacks said a total of 132 attacks had been recorded, but this figure subsequently clocked up to 188. As for the second report, the initial figure for attacks was held at 165, which was later updated to 222.

Burhan Kesici, chairman of the Berlin-based Islam Council, told Anadolu Agency that the anti-Islam discourse in Germany has recently increased and attacks usually focused on mosques and Muslims.

He called on all Muslims to file complaints to the police if they ever experience similar incidents and noted that the government response to the parliamentary question demonstrated how anti-Islam rhetoric in the country was a great issue.

Germany has witnessed growing Islamophobia in recent years sparked by hate propaganda of far-right parties. Police recorded 813 hate crimes against Muslims last year, including verbal insults, threatening letters, and physical attacks which led to the injury of at least 54 Muslims. More than 100 mosques and religious institutions were also attacked by far-right extremists in 2018.

Germany is home to 81 million people and is home to the second-largest Muslim population in Western Europe after France.

Of the country’s nearly 4.7 million Muslims, at least 3 million are of Turkish origin.