Soccer Dad

The huge problem of islamophobia

via Contentions:

SIMON JENKINS

What I think is extraordinary to people abroad, is that those of us who are enthusiasts for America and American liberties cannot see why you needed to do these things. You will never persuade the outside world that you have not restricted liberty in America. You will never persuade them that you have not taken out Muslims as a particular group, and you will never, and you never persuade them that you really needed to do these things.

Yes I understand that Jenkins is accusing the government of harrassing Muslims in the United States and that he's not speaking about hate crimes, however it is emblematic of a meme that a torrent of oppression - official and unofficial - was unleashed against Muslims in the United States since 9/11. Guess what? the numbers don't show it! (via memeorandum)

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee said it received an average of 120 to 130 reports of ethnically motivated attacks or threats each year between 2003 and 2007, a sharp decrease from the 700 violent incidents it documented in the weeks following the 2001 attacks.

Jihad Watch comments:

Of course, most Muslims worldwide are not Arabs, and most Arabs and native Arabic speakers in the United States are not Muslims, but this story is still extraordinarily significant in light of CAIR's repeated claims that "anti-Muslim hate crimes" have risen sharply in the U.S. since 9/11. They know well that victimhood is big business: insofar as they can claim protected victim status for themselves, they can deflect unwanted scrutiny and any critical examination of how jihadists use Islamic texts and teachings to justify violence and supremacism.

According the FBI in 2001 (.pdf), there were 481 anti-Islamic incidents. (In 2001 there were about twice as many anti-Jewish incidents.) In 2002 there were 155 anti Islamic incidents. (There were 930 - 6 times as many - anti-Jewish incidents in 2002.)The 700 figure cited by the AADC is likely high.

Israel Matzav correctly points out that antisemitism (or anti-Jewishness) was a much bigger problem in 2007. According to the FBI anti-Jewish incidents outnumbered anti-Islamic incident by 969 to 115.

For all the talk about Islamophobia, it still remains a less significant problem in America than antisemitism.

Crossposted on Yourish.