The Muslim News - Anti-Muslim attacks on the rise in the West

Issue 218, Friday 29 June 2007 - 12 Jumad al-Akhbar 1428

Anti-Muslim attacks on the rise in the West

By Fardusa Hassan

The level of hate crimes targeted towards Muslims and those who are thought to look like Muslims within Europe and North America is dramatically high according to a new survey released June 6 by a human rights organisation.
It was revealed at the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Bucharest, Romania, by Human Rights First, a leading human rights group based in America, and was part of their annual hate crime survey.
Executive Director of Human Rights First, Maureen Byrnes, claimed that violence against Muslims was extremely high in 2006. In criticising governments for lack of actions, she said, “Efforts to combat these crimes are greatly hampered by the fact that majority of governments in Europe still fail to collect date on these attacks.”
The annul report looked at the level of crimes committed against Muslims during 2006 and the growing trend of Islamophobia around the world since the attacks of September 11 and 7/7 bombings.
The report found that the violence towards Muslims was aggravated after September 11, fuelled by “the perpetuation of stereotypes and generalizations about Muslims,” and that terrorism acts done in the name of Islam caused “random reprisals against those identified rightly or wrongly as co-religionists of the perpetrators.”
It described horrific incidents towards Muslims, from verbal and physical assaults including fatal incident at individuals to arsenic attacks at mosques and desecration of the Islamic books including the Qur’an.
Examples included the murder of a pregnant Malian in Belgium, on May 11, 2006, after an anti-immigrant fanatic shot and killed her and a Belgian toddler in her care. Earlier before the perpetrator seriously wounded a hijab dressed Turkish woman. In Spain 2006, a group burned and defaced a copy of the Qur’an, months after vandalising a mosque.
The 7/7 bombings were identified as one of the main catalysts towards anti Muslim attacks and in the UK. Hate crime incidents from July 7 to August 21 2005, rose to a staggering 429 incidents reported to the police, the overwhelming majority against Muslims, a staggering 600 per cent increase.
However, the report clarified that the spate of violence towards Muslims was more motivated by existing prejudices outside of backlash towards religious extremism. “While foreign or domestic incidents can be trigger events that expose Muslim communities to periods of extreme violence, these episodes of racist and religious violence cannot be assessed in isolation.
“Rather, these waves of violence are extensions of pre existing relations between Muslim populations and the larger community in which they live. The prejudice and harassment Muslims face at the best of times is a major factor in the severity and duration of backlash violence.”

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