Elaine Brower of New York, with NYC Coalition to Stop Islamophobia, walks near the proposed mosque and Islamic community center near ground zero in New York, Friday, Sept. 10, 2010. Photo: Craig Ruttle/AP
The murder of three Muslim students in Chapel Hill, North Carolina is being investigated as a possible hate crime. The shooter, Craig Stephen Hicks, frequently posted anti-religious quotes and cartoons on what appears to be his Facebook page. The father of two of the victims told the News Observer that his slain daughter had recently said Hicks “hates us for what we are and how we look.”
If the incident does turn out to be motivated by anti-Islamic sentiment, it would be one of dozens of such events that happen each year, according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports program. Prior to the 9/11 attacks, the program typically recorded between 20 and 30 anti-Muslim hate crimes per year. But in 2001 that number rose more than tenfold to nearly 500. In the years since, annual hate crimes against Muslims have consistently hovered in the 100-150 range, roughly five times higher than the pre-9/11 rate.
These figures are almost certainly an undercount, given that participation in the program is voluntary, and some state and local police departments do a better job of tracking this data than others. Overall, anti-Muslim crimes now make up about 13 percent of religiously-motivated hate crimes, and 2 percent of all hate crimes in general.