Down but not out. From Barbara Ferguson in Arab News:
A prominent US Islamic civil rights group has released a study showing a significant increase in the total number of complaints of anti-Muslim bias in the United States between 2004 and 2005. The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations report blamed the trend of anti-Muslim bias including hate crimes, discrimination, and harassment on lingering animosity toward Muslims and a growing use of anti-Muslim rhetoric by some political, religious and media figures.
The organization said the increase is due to the lingering impact of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, increased awareness of civil rights issues in the Muslim community and what the group says is a general increase in anti-Muslim sentiment in American society.
According to the study, called “Presumption of Guilt,” that total is a 25.1 percent increase over the preceding year’s total of 1,972 cases. One of the most significant increases is in the category dealing with government agencies, which rose sharply from 19.22 percent of total reports in 2005 to 36.32 percent in 2006. This increase, said CAIR, was due primarily to the number of cases related to immigration issues such as citizenship and naturalization delays.
[…]
“These disturbing figures come as no surprise given growing Islamophobic sentiments and a general misperception of Islam and Muslims,” said CAIR Legal Director Arsalan Iftikhar, who wrote the 62-page report.
Blah, blah, blah. CAIR (now representing 90% fewer Muslims) has become the proverbial mosquito buzzing in the public ear: small, annoying, something you’d like to ignore but which just might be carrying ebola or whatever. One hopes that they will continue to whine their way into irrelevance.
The astonishing thing, really, is the restraint shown by Americans following 9/11. I heard a Muslim comic put it this way: after 9/11, “hate-crimes” against Muslims went up one-thousand percent — which puts them fourth behind blacks, Jews, and gays. Hurt, he scratches his head and wonders aloud, “I mean, what do we have to do?”