Soccer Dad: CAIR To Run That Bias Again?

October 24, 2006

CAIR To Run That Bias Again?

The results of the FBI report on 2005 bias attacks are in:

If the latest FBI hate-crime statistics are any indication, of the 1,314 verified offenses motivated by religious bias, 68.5 percent were anti-Jewish.
Only 11.1 percent were anti-Islamic, despite claims of rampant anti-Muslim bigotry in the U.S. by groups like the Council on American Islamic Relations.

What a difference a year does not make. Compare these numbers with 2004:

Of the 9,528 victims of hate crimes in 2004, 9,514 were associated with an incident involving a single bias. More than half of that number (53.8 percent) were victims of racial prejudice. Of those, 67.9 percent were victimized because of anti-black attitudes, and 20.1 percent were targets of anti-white sentiments.
Victims of religious intolerance made up 16.7 percent of the victims of incidents involving a single bias. Of those, 67.8 percent were victims of anti-Jewish bias, and 12.7 percent were targets of anti-Islamic bias.

So the numbers for anti-Jewish hate crime is slightly up; the numbers for anti-Muslim hate crime is slightly down. The latter should be good news for CAIR--but then again, CAIR is working pretty hard to keep those numbers up.

Daniel Pipes takes a look at some of the alledged hate-crimes that CAIR has reported in the past:

We examined in detail some "examples of anti-Muslim hate crime reports received by CAIR in 2004," on p. 43, plus some "samples" on p. 53 and discovered a pattern of sloppiness, exaggeration, and distortion:

CAIR cites the July 9, 2004 case of apparent arson at a Muslim-owned grocery store in Everett, Washington. But investigators quickly determined that Mirza Akram, the store's operator, staged the arson to avoid meeting his scheduled payments and to collect on an insurance policy. Although Akram's antics were long ago exposed as a fraud, CAIR continues to list this case as an anti-Muslim hate crime.

CAIR also states that "a Muslim-owned market was burned down in Texas" on August 6, 2004. But already a month later, the owner was arrested for having set fire to his own business. Why does CAIR include this incident in its report?

CAIR lists the March 2005 lawsuit filed by the Salmi family for the firebombing of their family van as one example of a hate crime report it received in 2004. However, the crime named in the lawsuit occurred in March 2003, was already reported by CAIR in 2003, and should not have been tabulated again in the 2004 report.

CAIR reports that "a home-made bomb exploded outside of the Champions Mosque in the Houston suburb of Spring, Texas," staking its claim on eyewitness reports that on July 4, 2004, "two white males" were seen placing the bomb. We inquired about the incident and found that Spring's sheriff department could not locate any police files about an explosion. Further inquiries to the mosque and an e-mail to CAIR both went unanswered. There is scant evidence that any crime even occurred.

CAIR notes that "investigators in Massachusetts are still investigating a potential hate-motivated arson against the Al-Baqi Islamic Center in Springfield." However the case was long ago ruled a simple robbery, news that even CAIR's own website has posted. The Associated Press reported on January 21, 2005, that prosecutors determined the fire was set by teen-age boys "who broke into the Al-Baqi mosque to steal money and candy, then set the fire to cover their tracks." The boys, they clarified, "weren't motivated by hatred toward Muslims."

CAIR describes what happened to a Muslim family in Tucson, Arizona: "bullet shots pierced their home as they ate dinner in October 2004" and two months later their truck was smashed and vandalized. But the only evidence that either incident was motivated by hate of Muslims is the Dehdashti family itself, not the police. Detective Frank Rovi of Pima County Sheriff's Department, who handled the shooting investigation, said that according to the neighbors, the desert area by the Dehdashti house was often used for target practice. Neither incident was classified as a hate crime and both cases were closed by February 2005, long before the CAIR report went to press.

The American Thinker gives a third example of a Moslem store owner setting his store on fire and--with CAIR's help--claiming it as an example of a hate crime.

More on falsified accounts of hate crimes can be found on Michelle Malkin's blog back in 2003--Myth of the Muslim hate crime epidemic and More Muslim hate crime myths.

In another article, Pipes links to a report NPR ran on the problems with the methodology used by different groups in order to track and report bias attacks--the audio of the report is still available from the NPR site. The reporter, Mike Pesca, notes that