WASHINGTON,
May 12, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – The anti-Muslim hate crimes,
discrimination and harassment in the United States have increased by
half over the past year, said a leading US Muslim civil liberties
group.
The
Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said in
a report released on Wednesday, May 11, and obtained by
IslamOnline.net, that 1522 incidents and experiences of anti-Muslim
violence, discrimination and harassment were recorded in 2004, by an
increase of 50% over the previous year's total.
CAIR
said the greatest increase over last year, in both real and
proportional terms, occurred in the areas of unreasonable arrests,
surveillance, interrogation, search and seizure of US Muslims.
“These
disturbing figures come as no surprise given growing Islamophobic
sentiments and a general misperception of Islam and Muslims,” said
CAIR Legal Director and the report's author Arsalan Iftikhar.
The
US Muslim group received about 1,900 complaints of abuses and rights
violations against the US Muslim minority last year and found it could
substantiate 1,522 of them, he told the Washington Post in
comments on the report.
“You
would figure, four years removed from a tragic event like 9/11, things
would tend to normalize. Unfortunately, this report shows this is not
the case yet.”
Ten
states accounted for almost 79% of all reported incidents with the
majority of attacks reported in California (20 percent), New York (10
percent), Arizona (9 percent), Virginia (7 percent), Texas (7
percent), Florida (7 percent), Ohio (5 percent), Maryland (5 percent),
New Jersey (5 percent), and Illinois (3 percent).
CAIR
is America's largest Muslim civil liberties group, having 30 offices
and
chapters nationwide and in Canada.
Post
9/11
The
sharp increase in the reported anti-Muslim hate incidents was
attributed, according to the CAIR report, to the lingering impact of
post-9/11 fears, increased awareness of civil rights issues in the
Muslim minority and a general increase in anti-Muslim rhetoric.
It
also said the increase in local CAIR chapters reporting cases of
discrimination and abuses associated with the implementation of
national security policies were also instrumental in the increase of
the reported anti-Muslim violence.
“We
honestly believe the American Muslim community is being selectively
prosecuted by the Justice Department,” Iftikhar said.
He
cited the case of Brandon Mayfield, a Muslim lawyer from Oregon who
was jailed last year on suspicion of involvement in a train bombing in
Spain.
Mayfield
was released, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
apologized, after discovering it had mistakenly matched a fingerprint
from the crime to him.
Nihad
Awad, CAIR Executive Director, urged US Congress to hold hearings on
the findings of the report on the increasing anti-Muslim hate crimes
in the country.
“We
call on President Bush, whose statements after the 9/11 attacks were
so important in helping to protect the well-being of the American
Muslim community, to once again speak out against Islamophobic
attitudes,” he said.
Drops
 |
|
“We
call on President Bush …to once again speak out against
Islamophobic attitudes,” Awad said
|
The
US Muslim liberties group, however, said there were drops in certain
categories of anti-Muslim discrimination from the past year.
For
example, workplace discrimination complaints constituted nearly 23
percent of complaints in 2003, but dropped to just under 18 percent of
total complaints in 2004.
Complaints
involving governmental agencies decreased from 29 percent in 2003 to
19 percent in 2004.
On
the third anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Amnesty International said
in a report that Racial profiling by US law enforcement agencies has
grown over the past three years to cover one in nine Americans,
mostly
targeting Muslims.
A
new nation-wide poll, conducted by the Cornell University and posted
on its Web site, showed that at least 44 percent of the American
society back
curbing
Muslims’ civil rights
and monitoring their places of worship.
A
May 2004 report released by the US Senate Office Of Research concluded
that the Arab Americans and the Muslim community in the United States
have taken the brunt of the Patriot Act and other federal powers
applied in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
Click
to Read CAIR Report in Full
