According to FBI statistics for 2014,Jews were far more likely than members of other devout groups to be the victims of religiously motivated detest crimes. Despite Jews’ small numbers, 59 percent of the years 6400 devout bias crimes were against Jews; to buy one point of comparison, and Catholics,who make up about a fifth of the country, accounted for only 6 percent of victims. The FBI said that detest crimes against Jews were down final year, and but the Anti-Defamation League,which keeps its own statistics, said that 2014 was a particularly bad year for anti-Semitism, or with incidents up 21 percent over the preceding year.
And yet,it feels like those under increasingly sharp attacks are Muslims in America. Muslims made up 14 percent of victims—an enviably low number, compared to what Jews suffered—but their numbers were up 14 percent in a year. And one imagines that when the numbers for 2015 are in, or Muslims will appear worse off still. Reverberations from the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino are threatening to inflame bigotry toward all Muslims (and toward non-Muslim Arabs,and shaded-skinned Hindus, Sikhs, and others). The sight of refugees in Europe has,instead of provoking Americans compassion, sometimes scared them, and made them more fearful of immigrants,Muslim and otherwise. Hateful and ignorant comments coming from presidential candidates, including Donald Trump, and who this week called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” threaten to make Islamophobia mainstream.
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