Tuesday, April 5, 2011

New Study on Hate Crimes Debunks the Myth of a Growing Trend in Muslim Victimization

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

New Study on Hate Crimes Debunks the Myth of a Growing
Trend in Muslim Victimization

Washington, DC, March 29, 2011 - The Center for Security Policy today released a revised edition of their groundbreaking longitudinal study, Religious Bias Crimes 2000-2009: Muslim, Jewish and Christian Victims - Debunking the Myth of a Growing Trend in Muslim Victimization, based on FBI statistics reported annually in the Uniform Crime Reporting Program. The Center's study contradicts the assertions that religious bias crimes against Muslims have increased, and that the alleged cause is widespread “Islamophobia” in America. In fact, the study shows that religious bias crimes - also known as hate crimes - against Muslim Americans, measured by the categories of incidents, offenses or victims, have remained relatively low with a downward trend since 2001, and are significantly less than the numbers of bias crimes against Jewish victims.

The Center's study also contradicts the assumption of increased hate crimes against Muslims which has been asserted by Senator Richard Durbin's (D-IL) Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution, and is the topic of hearings being held today. Printed copies of the study were delivered to each member of the U.S. Senate early this morning.

According to the Center's analysis, in 2009, Jewish victims of hate crimes outnumbered Muslim victims by more than 8 to 1 (1,132 Jewish victims to 132 Muslim victims). From 2000 through 2009, for every one hate crime incident against a Muslim, there were six hate crime incidents against Jewish victims (1,580 Muslim incidents versus 9,692 Jewish incidents). Even in 2001 when religious bias crimes against Muslims increased briefly for a nine-week period, total anti-Muslim incidents, offenses and victims remained approximately half of the corresponding anti-Jewish totals.

The study provides hard data that disproves the counterfactual statements made by a small number of highly vocal Muslim lobbying groups, many linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as leftwing activists. Citing these false assumptions concerning America’s alleged “Islamophobia” and a supposed rising trend in hate crimes against Muslim Americans, these organizations argued against holding the March 10, 2011 House Committee on Homeland Security hearings on Muslim American radicalization, and have argued for today's hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution . The study shows that these arguments against the March 10 hearings, and for today's March 29 hearings, are not based on facts but rather on a political agenda.

Frank Gaffney, President of Center for Security Policy remarked:

This report is important because it exposes a false belief perpetuated by a few vocal groups that religious bias crimes against Muslims are on the upswing. The truth is quite the opposite. These arguments, unsubstantiated by hard factual data, are corrosive to community relationships at every level of American society, and a potential threat to national security.

The full text of the white paper, and accompanying excel tables and charts, can be found at http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org.

  

2 comments:

  1. this is article is a disappointing reminder of US ignorance. get educated before you make asserstions given certain data. yes anti-islamic hate crimes have been generally decreasing since 2001... anti-jewish hate crimes:jewish-american population ratio is nowhere near proportional to anti-islamic hate crimes:muslim-american population. jews are estimated by the CIA to be over 28 times the population of muslims, so why is a hate crime only 8 times more likely to happen to a jewish person than a muslim? Islamophobia.
    thanks for letting me destroy your entire point.
    - liberal

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous, true to liberal traditions you have gotten your facts and figures wrong. According to the US Census Bureau Statistical Abstract 2009, the population of American adherents of Judaism was estimated to be approximately 5,128,000 (1.7%) of the total population in 2007 (301,621,000); including those who identify themselves culturally as Jewish (but not necessarily religiously), this population was estimated at 6,489,000 (2.2%) as of 2008.

    There is an ongoing debate as to the true size of the Muslim population in the US. Various institutions and organizations have given widely varying estimates about how many Muslims live in the U.S. These estimates have been controversial, with a number of researchers being explicitly critical of the survey methodologies that have led to the higher estimates.

    Others claim that no scientific count of Muslims in the U.S. has been done, but that the larger figures should be considered accurate. Some journalists have also alleged that the higher numbers have been inflated for political purposes. On the other hand, some Muslim groups blame the lower estimates on Islamophobia and the fact that many Muslims do not attend mosques.

    The lower counts of Muslim population range from 1.3 million from the American Religious Identification Survey in 2008 to 2.5 million from the Pew Research Center in 2009 to the high number of 7.0 million from the Council on American-Islamic Relations in 2010.

    Therefore your statement that there are "28 times" more Jews than Muslims is completely false.

    ReplyDelete

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