A Muslim woman who has been abused and spat at in the street says anti-Muslim hatred in the media is to blame.

Khola Hasan, an Islamic scholar, says the portrayal of Muslims is causing a rise in Islamophobia and making people feel like second-class citizens.

Ms Hasan works for the Islamic Sharia Council in Leyton and lives in Theydon Garnon, Epping Forest.

Prejudice and fear towards Muslims has increased in Epping Forest in recent years, she says, in line with increasing Islamophobia nationwide.

“I have seen it everywhere I have been,” she said.

In England and Wales, religiously motivated hate crime rose by 43 per cent from 2013-14 to 2014-15, a government report showed in October last year.

In Epping Forest, Ms Hasan says she has been targeted many times in recent years, and she now avoids going to areas such as Epping High Street.

She said: “I do not go down too often because I am sick of it.

“I was walking down Epping High Street and a man shouted at me ‘You bloody ISIS supporter’.

“Another time I was in Abridge and someone stopped their car and threw an empty glass bottle at me.

“I was absolutely terrified.”

She also says she has been spat at and followed around supermarkets by suspicious staff.

The rise in hostility towards Muslims has been more prevalent in areas where there are fewer people practicing Islam, she says, because communities are more isolated.

The overall rise in Islamophobia is due to constant negative portrayals of Muslims in mainstream media, she said.

“We have got this drip, drip effect of the media constantly feeding the people of this country that Muslims are an enemy within who set up their own courts, they have weird procedures and allow the grooming of children.

“There is always extremist violence on the TV.

“When you are fed a constant diet of hatred… people will be petrified and terrified.

“You are told we are to be feared and it has worked, it has succeeded.

“I think it is too late, I think the damage has been done.

“All I can hope is that in small pockets, Muslims can make a difference and show people they are not as others think.”

It was not always the way, said Ms Hasan.

“I grew up in the 1970s and people would call me Paki.

“I thought it would get better when I get older and as I grew up, it did disappear, people took me as an ordinary British person.

“Things started to improve and there was a point where Muslims were saying ‘thank God we are part of British society, and we have been accepted’.”

However, in the years since 9/11 Ms Hasan believes things have now gone the other way.

Although she says she is an “optimist” about the situation, she fears the damage has been done.

“I am also really scared for the future because I do not know what kind of future my kids are growing up in.

“Where will life take them?”