Blame The Howler Monkeys First
Muslims' complaints of bias in U.S. way up:
Muslims in the United States experienced more than 1,000 incidents of alleged harassment, violence and discriminatory treatment in 2003, a jump of 70 percent over the previous year, according to a report released Monday by a major Islamic advocacy group.
The report by the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) attributed the increase to such factors as Muslim-bashing on radio talk shows and tensions surrounding the war in Iraq.
The group, which has 24 offices nationwide, said it received 1,019 complaints from Muslims last year concerning discriminatory or violent actions, up from 602 in 2002. The biggest number of incidents had to do with employment and the refusal to accommodate religious practices. But there were 93 reported hate crimes, more than double the total in 2002. And there were cases in which Muslims alleged that laws were applied to them more harshly because of their ethnic or religious identity.
'We are definitely facing an uphill battle in the struggle for civil rights in this country, especially with regard to the American Muslim community,' said Muhammad Nimer, the author of the report, 'Unpatriotic Acts.'
Discrimination and "hate crimes" based on religion are obviously deplorable acts and should not be tolerated. But considering the fact that, whether we like it or not, we're at war with Muslim fanatics these numbers don't seem all that horrible to me. Yes, they're up from 2002, but when you're talking about 1019 complaints spread across 24 offices nationwide over a year, most of which have to do with employers having problems with Muslim religious practices in the workplace, we're hardly talking about an epidemic of bias here.
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