September 14,  2010   |  Volume 4, Issue 38

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Media continues narrative that Muslims experience “blowback” of hate crimes after terrorist attacks.

by Alana Goodman, Culture and Media Institute

Just a few hours after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks – when many Americans were still in a state of shock at the carnage and destruction flashing across their TV screens – the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) sent out an e-mail to the media warning that potential “backlash” from the attacks could harm Muslims.

“Those who wear Islamic attire should consider staying out of public areas for the immediate future,” read CAIR’s email, which also requested additional police patrols near mosques and a heightened vigilance for suspicious packages, people or vehicles near mosques.

And anti-Islamic violence did increase after the Sept. 11 attacks, accounting for 27 percent of religious-based hate crimes – but even at this height, it was still overshadowed by anti-Jewish violence, which accounted for 56 percent of incidents the FBI classifies as hate crimes.

Since then, violence against Muslims has decreased sharply, even as warnings of “epidemics” of anti-Muslim hate-crimes and allegations that “Islamophobia” the “new anti-Semitism” have noticeably increased.

Media outlets like the Associated Press, the New York Times and ABC have all given Muslim activists a platform to promote this claim.

“I think we are deeply concerned because this is like a metastasized anti-Semitism,” Ground Zero mosque organizer Daisy Khan told Christiane Amanpour ABC’s This Week on the Aug. 22. “It’s not even Islamophobia, it’s beyond Islamophobia. It’s hate of Muslims.”

Other prominent Islamic leaders have echoed the idea that bigotry against Muslims is rising.

“You saw some anti-Muslim views after 9/11, but they were relegated to the fringes of society where they should be,” Ibrahim Hooper, communications director for CAIR, told the Christian Science Monitor on Sept. 10. “Now anti-Muslim sentiment has really been mainstreamed.”

“The manufactured controversy surrounding the proposed Islamic cultural center near ground zero in New York has resulted in an increase in hate crimes targeting Muslim institutions nationwide,” said CAIR-Ohio Director Jennifer Nimer.

Since 2001, hate crimes against Muslims have decreased significantly, according to FBI statistics. After 2002, hate crimes against Muslims have not risen above 13 percent of all anti-religious crimes, and the most recent data from 2008 calculates them at 7.8 percent.

Despite this evidence to the contrary, each year has brought claims by prominent Muslim leaders that anti-Islamic hate crimes are actually growing – with the allegations usually coming right after a terrorist attack or at a time when Muslim leaders are lobbying on political issues.

In 2007, after a group of radical Islamists were caught plotting to attack Fort Dix military base, New Jersey newspaper The Star Ledger reported that “since news broke of an alleged plot to attack soldiers at Fort Dix, Muslim activists and community leaders have been hyper-vigilant for signs of an anti-Muslim backlash.”

Radio host Bill Keller was also adding to anti-Muslim sentiment in 2007, claimed Muslim leaders. “It is our belief that anti-Islamic rhetoric like that used in ‘Live Prayer with Bill Keller’ is exactly the type of language that is likely to incite hate crimes against the American Muslim community,” said a CAIR spokesperson on FOX’s Hannity and Colmes on August 27, 2007.

But the percentage of anti-Muslim hate crimes stood at 8.7 in 2007, down nearly 20 percentage points from 2001. By 2008, it had fallen to 7.8 percent.

In 2006, Inside Bay Area reported that Muslims were concerned a film called “United 93,” which was about the hijacked plane that crashed on Sept. 11, 2001, “could stir up anti-Islamic sentiments.”

“Safaa Ibrahim, executive director of the Council on American Islamic Relations, took her staff of four women wearing hijabs, the traditional Muslim head scarf, to a Thursday matinee,” reported the paper on May 7, 2006. “As a civil rights advocate, Ibrahim said, she wanted to see the movie after reports that several young Muslim-American women in Arizona were verbally assaulted by two people who said they had seen the movie.”

Muslim leaders seem to have been particularly worried in 2006, since they cited potential triggers of anti-Islamic crime in the arrest of members of a jihadist group in Florida, a video game sold at Wal-Mart, statements made by President George W. Bush, and a lecture by Pope Benedict XVI.

“Muslim leaders on Friday denounced the seven men arrested in Florida as members of a religious cult and implored the media not to refer to them as Muslims,” reported the Chicago Tribune on June 24, 2006.

President Bush’s use of the term “Islamic fascists” also “contribute[d] to a rising level of hostility to Islam and the American-Muslim community,” Parvez Ahmed, CAIR chairman wrote in a letter to the president in August, 2006.

Islamic activists also condemned a video game that they say portrayed Muslims as violent. “In the post 9-11 climate, when improving interfaith relations should be a priority for all, this type of product only serves to dehumanize others and increase interfaith hostility and mistrust,” said CAIR in a press release in December, 2006. “Each year, CAIR issues an annual report on the status of American Muslim civil rights, outlining hundreds of incidents involving anti-Muslim discrimination, harassment and hate crimes. It is our experience that many of these incidents result from Islamophobic rhetoric and negative images of Muslims in popular culture.”

Crimes against Muslims that year accounted for 11.9 percent of religious hate crimes.

In 2005, the trial of a Muslim college professor accused of terrorism also sparked claims by Islamic leaders that hate crimes would increase.

“We were concerned about how this trial is going to impact anti-Muslim sentiment and whether that’s going to provoke individuals’ anger and hate crimes against us,” Ahmed Bedier, director of communications in Florida for CAIR told The Baltimore Sun June 6, 2005.

Also in 2005, the AP reported that a train bombing in London might incite a rise in anti-Islamic violence. “Muslims across the United States are denouncing the bombing of London’s transit system and bracing themselves for a renewed wave of harassment that has continued since the Sept. 11 attacks,” reported the AP on July 8, 2005. “As Muslims gathered for Friday prayers, some New Jersey mosques planned boost security by posting guards at entrances, checking bags and making sure that there were no suspicious packages nearby.”

But the percentage of anti-Muslim hate crimes remained relatively unchanged in 2005, at 10.7 percent.

The media also supported the claim that anti-Islamic violence was increasing because of the Iraq war. “And the war in Iraq is having another side effect here in the United States, an increased backlash against Muslims,” reported CNN Live From on May 21, 2004.

Beheadings of Americans in Iraq by Muslim extremists in 2004 also caused a “backlash” of anti-Muslim violence, claimed Islamic leaders at the time.

“My sense was that after 9/11 people were open-minded,” CAIR-New Jersey Executive Director Faiza Ali told the Chicago Tribune on July 15, 2004. “But these acts are so horrific and repeatedly broadcast as the work of Islamic terrorists that when people hear the connection they can’t be open-minded. If the terrorist acts continue, the backlash will continue,”

CAIR officials told the Tallahassee Democrat that hate crimes against Muslims would likely increase in 2004, due to the media attention given to the beheadings. “Before it was normal discrimination for Muslims in places of employment,” Altaf Ali, executive director of CAIR Florida told the paper on July 26, 2004. “Now I’m seeing more hate crimes and vandalism in places of worship, and there is still a lot of profiling of Muslims at airports.”

However, despite the allegations, hate crimes against Muslims remained ticked up to 13 percent in 2004 – a far cry from 27 percent in 2001.

In 2003, right after the U.S. invaded Iraq, the Associated Press reported that Muslims feared a “backlash” of hate crimes in response to anti-Islamic bigotry caused by the war.

“More than a week into the United States-led conflict in Iraq, Arab and Muslim leaders in Rhode Island have instructed their communities to keep a low profile, out of fear of an ethnic backlash from the war,” the AP reported on March 31, 2003.

“We haven’t seen these types of (hate crime) cases in a while,” Hodan Hassan, CAIR spokeswoman in Washington, told the AP. “We can only surmise that this may be related to a heightened security alert.”

But this assertion wasn’t reflected by the data. Despite the fact that the number of overall anti-religious hate crimes remained the roughly same, the percent of them that were anti-Muslim stood at 10.9 percent in 2003.

The statistics reflect a disconnect between the assertions of increased Islamic hate crimes and reality. Nine years after the Sept. 11 attacks, activists and the media are using allegations of anti-Muslim prejudice to distract from problematic community issues like Islamic terrorism.