The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) released a report today which found there was a 57% increase in the number of anti-Muslim incidents in 2016, specifically 2,213 cases (versus 1,409 in 2015). Anti-Muslim hate crimes rose to 260 in 2016, up 44% from 180 in 2015. The report documents a wide variety of hate crime incidents including assaults, street harassment, employment discrimination, and what CAIR determined is “unwarranted contact by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
Reuters reports that “while [CAIR] had been seeing a rise in anti-Muslim incidents prior to Donald Trump’s stunning rise in last year’s presidential primaries and November election victory, it said the acceleration in bias incidents was due in part to Trump’s focus on militant Islamist groups and anti-immigrant rhetoric.”
Last fall, CAIR executives said they would start quarterly reports after noticing an uptick in incidents starting in 2014, which saw the rise of ISIS and scapegoated backlash in the Muslim communities. “There was this widespread sense that we were going right back to how it was after 9/11,” says Corey Saylor, director of the CAIR department on monitoring and combating Islamophobia. “We wanted to be able to put something factual out there.”
The Islamic Center of Rhode Island is in the report, as it was unfortunate recipient of harrasing letters following the presidential election. Faissal Elansari, a member of the mosque’s board, chooses to see the silver lining. “A lot of brothers and sisters from the Jewish and Christian communities gave us a lot of support, they called and sent support letters.”
