Jim Lobe

Reported incidents of anti-Muslim bias including hate crimes, discrimination, and harassment rose sharply in the United States last year, according to a new report by a major Islamic group.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CA-IR), in a report released We-dnesday, said it received 141 reports of actual or planned violence against Muslims or mosques nationwide, a 52 per cent increase over the 93 reports the group received in 2003 and the 42 it received in 2002.

In addition, the number of incidents reportedly involving some form of police or law-enforcement abuse, such as unreasonable arrests, detentions and sea-rches, rose sharply in 2004, constituting more than one-fourth of all cases of abuse or discrimination, according to the report, ‘Unequal Protection: The Status of Muslim Civil Rights in the United States 2005’.

Such cases constituted only seven per cent of reported incidents in 2003, according CAIR, which stre-ssed that its report could not be considered scientific because it relied on voluntary reporting by alleged victims or witnesses.

Altogether, it said, more than 1,900 incidents of abuse and discrimination were reported to CAIR, of which 1,522 were deemed sufficiently credible to be included in the tally. That total was 49 per cent greater than the 2003 totals.

“These disturbing figures come as no surprise given growing Islamophobic sentiments and a general misperception of Islam and Muslims,” said CAIR Legal Director Arsalan Iftikhar, who wrote the 62-page report. According to the 2000 census, 1.2 million U.S. residents identified themselves as being of Arab origin. Figures on Muslims are controversial, with estimates ranging from three million to seven million. Laila al Qa-tani, communications director of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), which also tracks hate crimes and the violation of the civil rights of Arab Americans, told IPS her group has seen a rise in abuses, particularly in employment discrimination.

Both groups said the ju-mp in the tallies was due at least in part to an increased willingness by victims and their families to report incidents compared to the immediate aftermath of the Sep. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Then, attacks on suspected Muslims and Arabs reached an all-time high and the federal government rounded up hundreds of Muslim immigrants and held them virtually incommunicado. The ongoing public controversy over the fate of civil liberties after the 2001 terrorist attacks has encouraged Muslim- and Arab- Americans to report incidents, according to Iftikhar and al Qatani. In addition, CAIR and other groups have mounted aggressive campaigns in Muslim- and Arab-American communities to encourage people to come forward.

CAIR’s communication director, Ibrahim Hooper, also suggested that the responsiveness of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to reports of hate cri-mes against Muslim Americans had encouraged more victims to come forward.

The CAIR report stressed that the actual number of Islamophobic incidents has almost certainly increased. It blamed the rise on the lingering atmosphere of fear directed at Muslims, Arabs, and South Asians that followed the 9/11 attacks and what it called the “growing use of anti-Muslim rhetoric by some local and national opinion leaders.” —IPS