Islamic Group Blames 50 Percent Increase on the Lingering Effects of 9/11
By Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 12, 2005
U.S. Muslims reported about 1,500 cases of hate crimes, unreasonable arrest, harassment and other alleged civil rights violations in 2004, a 50 percent increase over the previous year's total, according to a report released yesterday by a major Islamic advocacy group.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations attributed the jump, in part, to continued suspicions of Muslims and Arab Americans since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. But it said the rise also could reflect greater reporting of such incidents by Muslims.
"You would figure, four years removed from a tragic event like 9/11, things would tend to normalize. Unfortunately, this report shows this is not the case yet," said Arsalan Iftikhar, the group's legal director.
He said the Council on American-Islamic Relations received about 1,900 complaints of alleged abuses last year and found it could substantiate 1,522 of them.
The group's annual civil rights report found a striking increase in reports of suspected hate crimes against Muslims -- 141 last year compared with 93 in 2003. The alleged victims included Lebanese immigrants in Waldorf who found dog feces spread on their front door in August, as well as attacks on mosques in different parts of the country.
The FBI has not yet published statistics on hate crimes for 2004, but tallied 149 such incidents allegedly targeted at American Muslims in 2003. It had many more reports of hate crimes against Jews that year -- 927.
According to the CAIR report, Virginia ranked No. 4 in the number of violations reported, with 109 incidents last year, about 7 percent of the national total. Maryland had the eighth-highest number, 80 complaints, and the District had one alleged case.
The biggest category of violations logged in the CAIR report involved unreasonable arrest, surveillance, interrogation, search or seizure. They made up about one-fourth of all complaints.
"We honestly believe the American Muslim community is being selectively prosecuted by the Justice Department," said Iftikhar. He cited the case of Brandon Mayfield, a Muslim lawyer from Oregon who was jailed last year on suspicion of involvement in a train bombing in Spain. Mayfield was released, and the FBI apologized, after discovering it had mistakenly matched a fingerprint from the crime to him.
The Justice Department has said it has not singled out Muslims for prosecution. A spokesman, Eric Holland, said the department had investigated more than 650 "backlash" crimes against Muslims and Arabs since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, resulting in about 170 prosecutions by state, local and federal authorities.
Other large categories of complaints in the CAIR report dealt with lack of religious accommodation (15 percent of all incidents) and employment discrimination (13 percent).