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.
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 Soccer Dad.
Out of curiosity, what is the proportion of Jews to Muslims in the US? If, as I suspect, there are more Muslims here than there are Jews, the 840% disparity becomes even greater when viewed on a per capita basis.
By the way, did you see that a prominent pro-Israel advocate in San Francisco was found dead at the bottom of an elevator shaft after leaving an Arabic class this week? His friends say there is no reason to suspect suicide, and the police are treating it as an accident. Michael Savage (not always a reliable source) has pictures of the elevator door showing what he believes are signs of a struggle, and he may be right.
Hard to tell, Yankev, because they seem to inflate the number of Muslims in the U.S. I’ve read that it’s between one and three million. They claim five million.
So there are more Jews than Muslims, but no matter which way you cut it, CAIR lies about the number of attacks on Muslims. I go by the FBI crime statistics.
I heard about that case. I’m withholding judgment, as I’m not an officer investigating the death. If it was murder, don’t you think a police department would be interested in noticing that it was murder? People are really leaping to conclusions quickly here.
One thing I didn’t write, but that’s somewhat relevant is that the (per-capita) rate of hate crimes against Jews is higher than it is against Blacks. Blacks have roughly 7 times the population as Jews and suffer about 3 times as much in terms of hate crimes.
Most police departments would, but this is a San Francisco police department. They’re probably convinced, to a man, that if there was foul play, the victim incited it with his pro-Israel stance.