CAIR: US anti-Muslim incidents hit record high in 2023
Over 8,000 anti-Muslim complaints were recorded across the United States last year, marking the highest total in the 30 years the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has tracked the complaints, The Hill reported.
In its report, published Tuesday, CAIR said it received 8,061 complaints of anti-Muslim incidents, surpassing the previous record in 2021, when 6,720 incidents were reported. This number is up 56 percent from 2022, which had the first ever recorded drop in complaints since CAIR started tracking complaints in 1995.
CAIR received the most complaints in the final three months of the year and accounted for 44 percent of the year’s total tally, the report stated.
CAIR, a leading Muslim advocacy nonprofit group, connected the late-year surge to the domestic fallout from Israel’s war on Gaza.
During the three-month surge in which the most complaints – 3,578 – were received, employment discrimination was the main source of these complaints, followed by hate crimes and incidents, and education discrimination, CAIR noted.
CAIR noted last month’s three-month surge also saw a higher number of complaints than in the months following former President Trump’s travel ban that targeted several majority-Muslim countries, which saw nearly half, or about 1,813 complaints.