The Greater Los Angeles Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-LA) is reporting a massive 300% increase in requests for help and reports of Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian bias, hate incidents, and even hate crimes in the last month.
According to a press release, CAIR-LA received 116 reports and requests for help with hate incidents from October 8th, the day after fighting massively escalated in Gaza, until November 8th. The statistics show a huge increase over the usual number, generally slightly below 40 reports. 85 of the cases were linked directly to Palestine, and nearly 40% qualified as hate crimes or hate incidents.
A national organization of Muslim Americans, the CAIR’s Los Angeles chapter is Southern California’s largest Muslim civil liberties advocacy organization.
In their press release, CAIR-LA described how Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian rhetoric has been rising around the US, increasing the rate of hate-driven targeting of Muslim and Arab Americans, especially students and workers.
CAIR-LA’s Managing Attorney Dina Chehata said in a statement, “Nearly every day, we are getting calls from community members who have been affected in some way by the rise of Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian hate. Students have been harassed at school, workers have experienced retaliation, and people have been assaulted—simply for being Muslim, Arab, or for standing up for Palestinian human rights. This is not something that is happening just in California—it’s happening on a national scale.”
In the same month-long period, CAIR’s national headquarters and chapters received 1,283 complaints in total, a 216% increase from prior months at the national level.
CAIR-LA’s Executive Director Hussam Ayloush said that it’s the most substantial wave of Islamophobic hate since the 2015 Muslim Ban. He credited the escalating hate to the “Pervasive Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian rhetoric used by news outlets, political leaders, and even school administrators.”
He added, “This rhetoric, employed to justify violence against Palestinians in Gaza and stifle advocates for Palestinian human rights in the United States, has created an unprecedented wave of discrimination,” noting the rise to the recent spike in Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian hate.
In the last month, numerous hate crimes targeting Muslim and Arab Americans have been reported, including a Muslim Stanford student attacked in a hit-and-run, the murder of a 6-year-old boy, Wadea Al-Fayoume, and even bomb threats against CAIR’s own events.
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