(RNS) A woman in Freeport, Ill., hits a Muslim woman for wearing a head scarf; a Texas man firebombs a mosque in El Paso, and a Quran is stuffed in university library toilet in Stockton, Calif.
Those were just three of the 1,972 acts of violence, harassment and discrimination committed against Muslims in America in 2005, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which on Monday, September 18, 2006, released "The Struggle for Equality," a report examining Muslim civil rights in America.
The 2005 figure represents a 29.6 percent jump over 2004, when 1,522 cases were reported. The report also found that anti-Muslim "hate crimes" (physical assault) in 2005 rose 8.6 percent from the previous year, increasing to 153 last year from 141 in 2004.
"We believe the biggest factor contributing to anti-Muslim feeling and the resulting acts of bias is the growth in Islamophobic rhetoric that has flooded the Internet and talk radio in the post-9/11 era," said Arsalan Iftikhar, CAIR's legal director and author of the report. Iftikhar added that the rise in reported incidents can also be attributed to more Muslim Americans stepping forward to report such crimes.
Overall, nine states and the District of Columbia accounted for almost 79 percent of all civil rights complaints to CAIR in 2005, including California (19 percent); Illinois (13 percent); New York (9 percent); Texas (8 percent); Virginia (7 percent); Florida (6 percent); District of Columbia (5 percent); Maryland (4 percent); Ohio (4 percent); and New Jersey (4 percent).
-- Omar Sacirbey