Hate crimes targeting US Muslims rose 15 percent in 2017, the second year of increases, according to a study released on Monday by advocacy group the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
The group recorded 300 US hate crimes targeting Muslims last year, ranging from the June beating of a Muslim man in the Bronx borough of New York City by attackers who called him a terrorist to a November incident when a Muslim family’s Kansas restaurant was burned down. That was up from 260 in 2016.
“There has been nothing like this ever, for the Muslim community to be regularly the punching bag of the president of the United States,” said Gadeir Abbas, an attorney with CAIR, Reuters reported.
The 300 hate crimes were a slice of the 2,599 incidents CAIR logged as representing anti-Muslim bias in 2017, a figure that was up 17 percent from 2016. The larger total included harassment, employment discrimination and times when Muslims were subjected to what CAIR recorded as biased treatment by government agencies including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Customs and Border Protection.
