Anti-Muslim Incidents In U.S. Break Records, According To New Report

The CAIR report points to the war in Gaza as the primary driver behind the dramatic increase in anti-Muslim sentiment.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the country’s largest Muslim civil rights group, received more complaints of anti-Muslim incidents in 2023 than it has in any other year since it began recording cases 30 years ago.

The group received 8,061 complaints nationwide, according to a report published Tuesday, “Fatal: The Resurgence of Anti-Muslim Hate.” CAIR documented 5,156 complaints in 2022 and 6,720 in 2021, which was the previous record.

CAIR records a variety of incidents, including hate crimes and employment and education discrimination.

Nearly half of the 2023 complaints ― 3,578 ― were reported in the last three months of the year, which the report notes points to the war in Gaza as the primary driver behind the dramatic increase in anti-Muslim sentiment. After Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing roughly 1,200 people and taking 250 hostages, Israeli forces launched a full-scale attack in the Gaza Strip, killing nearly 33,000 Palestinians so far, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza.

Since then, Muslim and Palestinian Americans have faced severe backlash. In Vermont, three Palestinian students were shot while on a walk, an incident the state’s attorney in Burlington called “a hateful act.” In Illinois, a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy was stabbed to death and his mother was hospitalized in a hate crime by their landlord, who was angered over the Israel-Hamas war. In February, a passerby attempted to rip away a Palestinian keffiyeh scarf hanging out of a car window and stabbed a Palestinian American man.