US Sees Almost Threefold Surge in Anti-Muslim Hate amid Gaza War
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said it received 3,578 complaints of anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian hate in the last three months of 2023, a 178 percent jump from the same period in 2022.
The complaints included 662 cases of employment discrimination, 472 cases of hate crimes and hate incidents, and 448 cases of education discrimination, the group said on Monday, Reuters reported.
Some of the most disturbing incidents involved the shooting of three Palestinian students in Vermont in November and the fatal stabbing of a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy in Illinois in October.
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Rights activists have also observed a rise in Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian sentiment in other countries following the outbreak of war since October 7 in the Gaza Strip.
The US government has issued security guidelines for faith-based communities to protect themselves from hate crimes, which have escalated since the October 7 operation by Resistance groups in the occupied territories and Israel's devastating response, which killed more than 26,000 Palestinians, or over one percent of Gaza's 2.3 million people.
Source: Agencies
