Bus in London. Photo: WikiCommons.

A British survey on discrimination found that 15% of respondents don’t trust Jews, the BBC reported, while some 60% of respondents thought Muslims had a negative image in the country.

The Comres survey of 1,001 Brits, aged between 18 and 24, conducted online in June, painted a surprising picture of discrimination across a broad spectrum of people, categorized by age, education, location and income, when asked to categorize their views.

When asked about religious groups other than Jews, 12% said they didn’t trust Christians, 13% said they didn’t trust Buddhists, 16% said they didn’t trust Hindus or Sikhs, while 27% said they didn’t trust Muslims.

Young people place the blame for distrust of Muslims in Britain on terror groups abroad (26%), the media (23%) and UK Muslims who have committed acts of terror (21%), the BBC reported.

Outside the survey, other figures also supported the findings, including data from the Metropolitan Police, released in August, that pointed to a 61% rise in anti-Muslim crime in London over the past year. The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) has also said there has been an “unprecedented escalation of violence” since the brutal killing of Fusilier Lee Rigby by Islamists in May, the BBC reported.

Akeela Ahmed, from the Cross-government Working Group on Anti-Muslim Hatred, was quoted as saying: “These findings indicate that we need to ensure young people are mixing at local levels and that they’re working on projects together so that people can get to know Muslims and vice versa.”

Professor Matthew Goodwin, another one of the group’s members quoted by the BBC, said: “Every survey that I have run, and surveys run by my academic colleagues, makes it quite clear that a significant proportion of the British population hold negative views of Islam, and by extension British Muslim communities.”