VIENNA — ‘Islamophobia’ is on the rise across Europe, where many Muslims are menaced and misunderstood - some on a daily basis - the European Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia said Monday in a new report. The Vienna-based center, which tracks ethnic and religious bias across the 25-country European Union, said Muslims routinely suffered problems ranging from physical attacks to discrimination in the job and housing markets. It called on leaders to strengthen policies on integration, and on Muslims to ‘engage more actively in public life’ to counter negative perceptions driven by terrorism or violence, such as the backlash this year caused by cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. ‘The key word is ‘respect,” said Beate Winkler, director of the group. ‘People need to feel respected and included. We need to highlight the common ground that we have.’ Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, many of Europe’s nearly 13 million Muslims feel ‘they have been put under a general suspicion of terrorism,’ Winkler said. Although the center conceded that it had been hampered by incomplete data that make Islamophobic acts ‘underreported and underrecorded,’ it listed hundreds of cases of violence or threats against Muslims […]