There’s No Epidemic of Anti-Muslim Violence in the U.S.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch, left, speaks at the U.S. Mission in Geneva, while President Barack Obama, right, speaks in the Oval Office in the wake of San Bernardino. (Photos: Getty)
In the wake of the terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif., President Barack Obama chastised Americans from the Oval Office and warned against anti-Muslim backlash. Attorney General Loretta Lynch promised radical supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood last week that she would bring legal action against “anti-Muslim rhetoric” that “edges toward violence.”
Lynch was speaking at the 10th Anniversary Dinner of Muslim Advocates, the same group that lobbied the Obama administration to scrub all references to Islam and jihad in training manuals and courses used to train agents in intelligence agencies.
According to the Uniform Crime Reporting Program, which is used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to collect data about both single-bias and multiple-bias hate crimes, there were and are far more anti-Semitic crimes committed against Jews than anti-Muslim crime. In fact, the latest data from 2014 doesn’t at all reflect growing anti-Muslim sentiment spewing from white America, or any demographic group in the U.S. for that matter.
Of the 1,092 offenses reported as a hate crime motivated by religious bias, 58.2% were anti-Jewish crimes. On the other hand, 16.3% were anti-Islamic (Muslim); 6.1% were anti-Catholic; 4.7 percent were anti-multiple religions, group; 2.6% were anti-Protestant; .2% were anti-Atheism/Agnosticism/etc.; and, 11.0% were anti-other (unspecified) religion.
The data clearly show that the two religious (or anti-religious) groups that the Left champions with the loudest voices–Muslims and Atheists–really don’t have much of a gripe, relatively speaking. In reality, considering the events in Europe, record Islamic immigration and the president’s decision to take in more Middle East refugees, the future and security of American Jews is a far more pressing question. Last week, the Chief Rabbi of Brussels announced that there was no future for Jews in Europe in the wake of mass Muslim migration.
Serious U.S. policy-makers should consider the potential for a similiar anti-Semitic backlash in the homeland, rather than political correctness.
Speaking of a lack of seriousness, Republican frontrunner Donald Trump was catching a tremendous amount of heat on Tuesday after he proposed on Monday to put a ban on Muslim immigration into the United States. According to the statistics, Muslims account for only about 1% of the U.S. population, yet account for about half of terrorist attacks since 9/11. That means Muslims in the United States are about 5,000% more likely to commit terrorist attacks than non-Muslims.
