In organising “the first ever US National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia,” the Biden administration has once more targeted on hate crimes in opposition to Muslims regardless of the rise this yr in hate crimes in opposition to Jews. How correct is Vice President Kamala Harris’ declare: “Muslims in America and those perceived to be Muslim have endured a disproportionate number of hate fueled attacks”?
Earlier than going by these numbers, we have to make a number of factors. All crime is horrible. Crime harms victims, no matter its motive. The FBI information is subjective when it comes to what’s counted as a hate crime — so there’s the difficulty of accuracy. We guess that the biases within the FBI correspond to the political biases within the Biden administration. Sadly, whereas the FBI information incorporates the faith of the victims, it doesn’t report the faith of the perpetrators.
Because the determine on the high reveals, hate crimes in opposition to Jews are 386% extra frequent than crimes in opposition to Muslims. Murders involving hate are 260% extra frequent in opposition to Jews than Muslims. And the destruction/vandalism that happens in opposition to the Jews is 1,644% larger than in opposition to Muslims. Christians face a 50% total higher variety of hate crimes than Muslims, although they face fewer assaults or murders.
A extra useful method of taking a look at these numbers is to have a look at the per capita charges, and given that there have been about 7.6 million Jews versus 3.8 million Muslims, that may scale back the hole between the 2 teams. The per capita whole hate crime fee for Jews is greater than twice the speed confronted by Muslims. What stands out is the massive per capita fee of hate crimes in opposition to Sikhs. No different group faces the same fee of whole offenses, assaults, or destruction/vandalism. The per capita charges for all religions or Christians are only a tiny fraction of the assaults in opposition to different teams.
This final graph reveals that even adjusting for the distinction in inhabitants sizes, Jews face a lot larger charges than Muslims of whole offenses (143% extra), murders (80% larger), and destruction/vandalism (772% larger), however a 25% decrease assault fee.
The PEW Research Center estimates that there have been 3.45 million Muslims in 2017. We assumed the expansion fee between 2017 and 2020 was the identical as the expansion fee from 2011 to 2017 to get the estimated inhabitants in 2020. There have been an estimated 7.6 million Jews within the US in 2020. There have been 70,697 Sikhs, although that may be an overestimate as a result of not all of them may be training Sikhs and won’t put on the normal headwear or the beard. And 210 million Christians.
