There have been at least 30 attacks on Muslims – mainly against women wearing the hijab – in the three weeks since the police anti-terror raids and threats by Islamic State put relations between the Islamic community and mainstream Australia on edge.

Muslim community leaders are compiling a register of religiously motivated incidents, which includes reports of physical and verbal assaults, threats of violence against senior clerics and damage to mosques.

They claim “mistrust” with police had led to the real rate of anti-Islamic episodes going unreported and the threat of segregation for women wearing the niqab into Parliament had licensed a new wave of people willing to vent against Muslim women in public in recent days. Muslim groups have begun arranging escorts for women to go shopping.

While national security agencies have been boosted with almost $650 million in new funding, Muslim leaders are critical of the level of police resources put into stopping hate crimes at street level.

Among recorded incidents, a woman was threatened with having her hijab torn from her head and set alight, a cup of coffee was thrown through the car window of a woman driving in a hijab, and a pig’s head and cross were thrown into the grounds of a Brisbane mosque.

A mother in western Sydney was spat on and had the pram carrying her baby kicked, according to the list of incidents compiled by the western Sydney-based Muslim Legal Network and the recently launched Islamophobia Register.

A list of verbal attacks includes a Muslim mother in Melbourne who was warned to remove her child from playing with group of non-Muslim children at a play park.

At least four mosques have been targeted with written threats, graffiti and thrown objects. Queensland has the highest rate of personal assaults and threats to mosques, according to the list.

Solicitor Lydia Shelly, of the Muslim Legal Network, said:  “We have noticed an increase in attacks against Muslim women in public places, of those who wear a scarf or a hijab. As a Muslim woman, I am very concerned that this is impacting on the rights or perhaps the freedom of movement for Muslim women, because they simply do not feel safe any more.

“We have had property defaced. We have had death threats issued to our spiritual leaders and threats to bomb the mosques and things like that.”

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A Brisbane man has been charged after allegedly threatening to set a Muslim woman’s head scarf on fire.

The 26-year-old woman left an Islamic centre in West End on September 9 and was walking down Boundary St when three men outside a pub approached her, police say. One then allegedly threatened to set her head scarf on fire.

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A man has been refused bail after pleading not guilty to verbally attacking two Muslim women as they drove through Newcastle, north of Sydney.

Scott Papworth, 27, is accused of yelling abuse about Islam and punching a side-view mirror as a woman, 26, and her mother sat in a car in the city about 7:00pm (AEDT) last night. Police say Papworth followed the pair as they drove away and continued the abuse after they pulled over to fix the car’s mirror.

Papworth is also accused of punching a man who tried to help the women, and stealing mobile phones from two people who intervened, before being apprehended by members of the public.

In Newcastle Local Court this afternoon, Papworth pleaded not guilty to two counts of intimidation, two counts of larceny, one count of assault and one count of malicious damage. Police prosecutor Karl Moir told the court it was “a racially provoked attack on innocent people” and the allegations were very serious given the “present climate” relating to Islam in Australia.

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