President Obama and other leftists continue to sound the alarm against anti-Muslim hate crimes. But FBI data shows that few hate crimes are directed at Muslims in the country and that many more are directed at Jews.
The FBI bases its annual report on information submitted by law enforcement agencies. This year, 86 percent of the nation’s nearly 18,000 law enforcement agencies provided hate crime reports for 2014 to the FBI.
According to Forward, the data showed that around 60 percent of religious-based hate crimes committed in the U.S. last year were directed at Jews. These crimes produced 648 victims, which amounted to around 57 of the total victims of anti-religious crimes. By contrast, Muslims were the target of just about 15 percent of these crimes and made up 16.1 percent of victims.
The U.S. population contains just about twice as many Jews as Muslims. Yet Jews were the target of four times as many hate crimes as Muslims in this country.
Fortunately, the FBI reported no religiously-motivated murders of Jews or Muslims in the U.S. last year. However, according to Forward, a Kansas man killed three people outside of Jewish centers, and his intent in each case was to kill a Jew.
The FBI says it did not include these murders in its report due to bad reporting by Kansas authorities. Even though the victims weren’t Jewish, the killings should have been considered anti-religious hate crimes directed at Jews, the FBI concedes.
One hate crime against anybody is too many. But when we consider the size of this country and the relatively small number of religious-based hate crime, this phenomenon doesn’t strike me as a serious problem. If it is one, though, it’s more of a problem for American Jews than for American Muslims.
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