After 9/11, increased acts of anti-Muslim violence and employment discrimination were well documented. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reported that employment discrimination against Muslims more than doubled, while FBI statistics demonstrated a 1,600 percent increase in hate crimes against Muslims from 2000 to 2001.
An outfit in bed with Sharpton is not to be trusted out of hand, so I thought I would try to verify that. First I looked at the FBI numbers by looking at the FBI's hate crime reports for 2000 and 2001. I can see where they got their number.
Incidents
Offenses
Victims
2001
481
546
554
2000
28
33
36
Percent change
1618
1555
1439
Those big percentage increases arise in part from a very small base, but you can decide for yourself if those numbers constitute a "wave". My skepticism is heightened by the definition of a hate crime. From the 2001 report:
Because motivation is subjective, it is diffi cult to know with certainty whether a crime was the result of the offender’s bias. Therefore, law enforcement reports an incident as a hate crime only if the investigation revealed suffi cient, objective facts to lead a reasonable and prudent person to conclude that the offender’s actions were motivated, in whole or in part, by bias against a racial, religious, disability, ethnicity/national-origin, or sexual-orientation group.
So note. These numbers are charges, not convictions. They could be made up. (Yes, I grant that there could be, and likely are, real cases that are unreported. But ADL is using the reported cases to make its claim.) They also depend on the willingness of a police officer to list a crime as a hate crime. That could depend on the evidence available, and it could also depend on the influence of activist groups (CAIR and the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee come to mind) on the police. The ADL's claim of a "wave" strikes me as unpersuasive. What about the EEOC? The ADL says they documented a doubling of employment discrimination. The EEOC says this:
From September 11, 2001, to September 10, 2002, the EEOC received 706(2) charges of discrimination based on Religion - Muslim. In the same period last year, September 11, 2000, to September 10, 2001, the EEOC received 323 charges alleging discrimination based on Religion - Muslim.
The footnote says "some" (as in they won't specify how many) of the post 9/11 charges come from alleged incidents before 9/11. That would fall into "more than doubled" category (706 is a 119% increase over 323). The problem here is these are complaints, not necessarily true. The EEOC created a special Process Type Z to cover
charges alleging discrimination related to the events of September 11, 2001, by individuals who are - or are perceived to be - Muslim, Arab, Afghani, Middle Eastern or South Asian or individuals alleging retaliation related to the events of September 11, 2001.
The EEOC reports that between September 11, 2001 and September 10, 2002, there were 654 charges filed under Process Type Z. As of October 1, 2002, 449 of those charges had been resolved. Of those 449, only 95 were resolved in a manner favorable to the complainant. That is a whopping 21% (on par with religious discrimination complaints generally). I cannot find anything from the EEOC's web page that indicates the success rate of pre-9/11 complaints, or of the unresolved post 9/11 complaints. Suppose it was the same 21%. Then in the year prior to 9/11 there were 68 (= 323 x .21) incidents of employment discrimination against Muslims or people people perceived to be Muslims, compared to 137 (= 654 x /21) in the year after. That s an increase of 69. In a country of about 300 million, an extra 69 incidents. It is of course possible that the EEOC is systematically ignoring discrimination against Muslims and Arabs, but Cari Dominguez, EEOC chairman, got a "Friend in Government" award in 2004 from the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee. You know, those moderates. They pretended that Arafat was not a supporter of suicide bombers and they claim that
the experience of the Palestinians as perceived by the Arab and Muslim world is similar in kind to that of the Holocaust as perceived by the Jews
I absolutely cannot imagine them pushing anyone to make a false discrimination charge.
I do not mean to slight the incidents. Calling someone Osama because he is a Muslim is appalling behavior. But if the ADL thinks 69 is a wave, it is simply fear mongering. Then again, that would be expected behavior from an outfit in bed with Al Sharpton.
Posted by sjostrom on October 24, 2008 03:44 AM
Comments:
Well, you're massaging the numbers to get what you want. The ADL was corrrect, but they should have pointed out that the base line was awfully small to begin with.
Also, the Islamophobia that Kristol was talking about was something along the lines of mass deportation -- and that certainly didn't happen.
Posted by: Dom on October 25, 2008 03:16 PM [Permalink]
