A new study by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR [1]) finds that crimes against Muslims in the U.S. jumped by more than 50% in 2004. The report outlines 1,522 cases of harassment, discrimination or violence against Muslims last year, including 141 hate crimes, compared with 1,019 cases and 93 hate crimes in 2003. "These disturbing figures come as no surprise given growing Islamophobic sentiments and a general misperception of Islam and Muslims," said Arsalan Iftikhar, CAIR legal director and the report's author. (Al-Jazeera [2], May 12)
Ironically, the report comes days after the hateful conservative website MichNews.com [3] carried a blistering attack on CAIR, which blasted the organization for criticizing right-wing pundit Ann Coulter's hideous prescription on how the U.S. should deal with the Muslim world: "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." MichNews gasbag J. Grant Swank Jr. writes: "CAIR cannot tolerate truth; CAIR is founded on deceit." Why? Because the organization dares to portray Islam as a religion of peace. As evidence to the contrary, that clever Swank provides a sampling of bloodthirsty quotes from the Koran about killing infidels, etc. I guess it has never occurred to this genius that there are even more similarly bloodthirsty quotes in the Bible--as the atheist website EvilBible.com [4] points out with much glee.
See our last blog post [5] on the right's official campaign of hate against Islam.
