Hate crimes against Muslims in U.S. on rise
uploaded 04 May 2004Civil rights group reports doubling over past year; 40 incidents documented in Md.
Two teen-agers lit a small cross on fire last July on the lawn of an Islamic school and mosque in College Park. That act was among more than a thousand reported incidents of harassment, violence and discrimination against Muslims across America in the past year -- an increase of nearly 70 percent over 2002 -- according to the nation's largest Muslim civil rights group.
Hate crimes against Muslims more than doubled in the past year from 42 to 93, according to a report released today by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). At the same time, overall complaints of harassment, violence and discrimination leapt from 602 to 1,019, CAIR said.
Maryland accounted for 40 of those cases.
The report attributed the overall increase in reported incidents to a lingering atmosphere of fear from the 9/11 attacks, hostility driven by pro-Iraq war rhetoric, what CAIR called abuse of the Patriot Act and an increase in CAIR offices nationwide.
"It shows that there is a growing problem here and that it's getting worse and worse," said Mohamed Nimer, CAIR's director of research and the author of the report, Unpatriotic Acts.
"It boils down to a logic of prejudice that is holding Muslims -- because of real or perceived religious and ethnic background -- responsible for whatever other Muslims do."
Source: The Baltimore Sun
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