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Hate Attacks on Muslims in U.S. Spike After Recent Acts of Terrorism - NBC News

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NEWS DEC 20 2015, 12:22 PM ET

Hate Attacks on Muslims in U.S. Spike After Recent

Acts of Terrorism
by CORKY SIEMASZKO

This photo provided by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community muslimsforpeace.org shows crosses in spray paint vandalizing
windows at the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community Baitus-Salaam Mosque in Hawthorne, Calif., Sunday, Dec. 13, 2015. AP
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Muslims in America appear to have a bull's-eye on their backs.

Hate crimes targeting Muslims, their mosques and businesses, have tripled this
year and the bulk of the attacks have occurred in recent weeks, according to a
tally by California State University San Bernardino college professor Brian Levin.
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Hate Attacks on Muslims in U.S. Spike After Recent Acts of Terrorism - NBC News

There have been 38 anti-Muslim attacks in the U.S. since the deadly Nov. 13
terrorist attacks in Paris, Levin found.
And 18 of those happened in the wake of the Dec. 2 slaughter in San
Bernardino, according to Levin, whose oce is just nine miles from the
government building where a radicalized Muslim couple murdered 14 people
and wounded 22 more before they were killed by law enforcement.
All that is good for ISIS, Levin told NBC News.
"Among ISIS' most prominent goals is painting the west as being incompatible
with the Muslim faith and hostile toward Muslims who live there and reject the
caliphate," said Levin, who was a New York City police ocer before he became
an academic.
Related: Hispanic Muslims Stuck at 'Intersection' of Suspicions
In an address at the White House Thursday, Vanita Gupta, who heads the Civil
Rights Division at the Department of Justice, also noted the reported rise in antiMuslim incidents.
"Similar to what we saw after 9/11, in recent weeks following the terrible and
tragic attacks in San Bernardino and Paris and amidst a ratcheting up of
divisive rhetoric around religious intolerance community members and
advocates have reported an uptick in hate-related incidents targeting Muslim
Americans, as well as those perceived, rightly or wrongly, as being Muslim," he
said.
There have been reports of anti-Islamic attacks across the country wherever
Muslims live. Girls wearing hijabs have been harassed. Mosques have been
defaced and targeted by arsonists. One Muslim woman was menaced by a man
with a knife. A Queens shopkeeper was beaten-up by a customer shouting antiMuslim slurs.
On Tuesday, the Iraq-born owner of Middle Eastern Pastries in South Salt Lake,
Utah found a swastika spray-painted on the window and door of his business
and for reasons even less clear the number 3. Local cops have launched a
hate-crime investigation.
"I have no idea why people would do this to us and I don't want to guess
nothing or think about this," a spokesman for the owner told NBC News.

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Hate Attacks on Muslims in U.S. Spike After Recent Acts of Terrorism - NBC News

"No names, no names," the

frightened spokesman said when
asked for his. "We are afraid. We
don't want no hate. We want this to
go away."

Store owner Sarker Haque speaks about being

attacked during a news conference in New York on
Dec. 10. Haque, who is a Muslim, was attacked in
his store in Queens and the police are investigating
the incident as a hate crime. Seth Wenig / AP

Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on

American-Islamic Relations said the
atmosphere right now reminds him of
the fraught days after the 9/11 attacks

when hundreds of Muslims were

attacked under the guise of payback
for the Al Qaeda assaults. And
Hooper points the nger at Donald Trump and other Muslim-bashers.
"Somebody on our Facebook site likened what's happening to lava building in a
volcano and nally erupting," he told NBC News. "This toxic atmosphere has
been building for years. The Paris attacks, the San Bernardino attacks and
Donald Trump's hateful rhetoric has caused it to erupt."
There were 481 anti-Islam hate crimes reported in 2001, most of them after the
Sept. 11 attacks, for an average monthly rate of 40.1, according to FBI statistics
crunched by Levin.
Over the last ve years, Levin found that there were 150.8 anti-Islamic hate
crimes per year for a monthly average of 12.6.
Currently, the 38 suspected hate crime cases are 2.94 times the average
monthly rate seen from 2010-2014.
The FBI said it was still in the process of compiling the latest hate crime
statistics for 2015.
"We continuously work with our state and local partners to secure communities
and to investigate and bring to justice those who would commit violent acts or
make violent threats against others based on the victim's Constitutionallyprotected characteristics or beliefs, real or perceived," an agency spokesman
said in a response to a question from NBC News.
The Obama Administration was so concerned about a backlash against
American Muslims that President Obama's top advisers held a series of
meetings Monday with Islamic leaders to discuss the fallout their communities
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Hate Attacks on Muslims in U.S. Spike After Recent Acts of Terrorism - NBC News

are facing.
They also included leaders from the Sikh community, which, while not Muslim,
has also been the target of bias attacks because men of the faith wear
distinctive turbans often wrongly associated with Islam.

Grati in the shape of the Eiffel Tower inside a circle is painted on the side of the Islamic Center in
Omaha, Neb., on Nov. 17, 2015. A Muslim civil rights group wants the FBI and local police to investigate
the vandalism as possible hate crime, that may be related to the Paris terror attacks. Nati Harnik / AP

CORKY SIEMASZKO

TOPICS U.S. NEWS, 2016 ELECTION, ASIAN AMERICA, IMMIGRATION, MIDEAST

FIRST PUBLISHED DEC 20 2015, 12:22 PM ET
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