Contrary to Media Reports, FBI Hate Crime Statistics Do Not Support Claims of Anti-Muslim Backlash

by Jonathan S. Tobin  •  December 4, 2017 at 4:00 am

• Although the instances of hate crimes documented by the government are worrisome and deserving of condemnation, the statistics published by the FBI over the last 17 years refute both the Islamophobia narrative and the claim of a widespread backlash against Muslims in the aftermath of terrorist attacks by Islamists.
• The myth of a post-9/11 "backlash" against Muslims is politically motivated and spread by groups such as the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR), which presents itself as a civil rights group, but was founded to serve as a front organization for the terrorist group Hamas. The effort to persuade the public that America is Islamophobic stemmed largely from the aim to shift the narrative about terrorism to that of an Islamist war on the West to one according to which Muslims are terrorized by and in the United States.
• Although Jew-hatred remains a greater problem in America than hatred against Muslims, this would not justify a charge that the United States is an anti-Semitic country. By the same token, it is unjust to call America Islamophobic.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks during a Hate Crimes Subcommittee summit on June 29, 2017 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

The annual release of the FBI's hate crime statistics report has attracted little attention by the mainstream media in the past few years. The most recent report, however -- revealing a rise in hate crimes targeting Muslims and whites in 2016 -- has been greeted with more notice than usual by the daily newspapers; even CNN chimed in to highlight the results of the report.

The reason for the sudden interest in the report was that its data appeared to confirm some of the conventional wisdom about the impact of the U.S. 2016 presidential election on anti-Muslim sentiment in America. According to the report, compared to 2015, there were increases in most categories of hate crimes. The bulk of them were based on race, ethnicity and ancestry -- with the total number of such incidents rising by 5%. Still, it is the increase in anti-Muslim crimes, which increased by 20% since 2015, that stands out.

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