Muslim liaison organisation CMO has created a national hotline for people to report attacks and discrimination involving mosques in the Netherlands.
The move comes amid concerns that many incidents are never reported.
Dutch police have also acknowledged that discrimination is often underreported in the country.
CMO hopes the new online reporting platform, which will go live on September 20, will make it easier for people to speak about their experiences.
Muhsin Köktas, chairman of CMO, said he believed the platform “will lower the threshold for our community to report incidents here”.
Last year, 414 cases of discrimination against Muslims were reported to Dutch police. Only 20 of those reports came from mosques.
Köktas believes the real number of incidents could be higher because many people do not report them.
He said this happens “because often nothing happens or if someone reports an incident, they don’t know what happens with it afterwards”.
Dutch police said they are aware that many cases of discrimination are not reported and encouraged people to contact them when incidents happen.
“In broad terms discrimination is rarely reported, including discrimination against Muslims or incidents at mosques,” a police spokesperson said.
“[The hotline] can help people who experience discrimination to give their account, but we encourage these people to come to us as well. We can only take action, get a picture of problems in society and respond to them if we know what is going on.”
