Kamangir (Archer)

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Islamophobia and Antisemitism in the US, A Question (Updated)

Kamangir | November 22, 2007 | Category Human Rights, US

I just stumbled upon a post in Mystical Politics about FBI’s 2006 Hate Crime Statistics in the US. Rebecca writes,

…in the most serious category of crimes against persons (aggravated assault), the number of anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim offenses is almost identical, but in all other categories, especially intimidation and destruction/damage/vandalism, the number of incidents directed against Jews is far larger. It strikes me that these figures belie the claim that Islamophobia is a much greater danger than anti-semitism in the United States. If that were true, it would mean that far more Muslims than Jews would be victims of hate crimes. [Emphasize from me]

I then read in BBC that,

Of the victims attacked because of religious bias, 65.4% were Jewish and 11.9% were Muslim.

When I first saw these reports I started writing a Persian post to complain about all the “Muslims are hated in America” claims in the state-run media as well as in the public’s opinion. So, I prepared this table.

Number of cases of crime against religious minorities
	Jewish	Muslim
Aggravated assault	22	24
Simple assault	58	30
Intimidation	244	79
Burglary	7	5
Destruction/damage/vandalism	672	51
Total	1003	189

For the sake of better presentation, this table only shows the five main categories of crimes, the last two of which are against property. This table is definitely in line with Rebecca’s understanding, as well that of BBC’s. What is not taken into consideration in this table, however, is the difference between the Jewish and Muslim populations in the US. According to Wikipedia, 1.4% of Americans are Jewish while only 0.5% are Muslim.

So, I created another table, this time looking at relative numbers (normalized by population).

Relative number of cases of crime against religious minorities
	Jewish	Muslim
Aggravated assault	15.71	48
Simple assault	41.43	60
Intimidation	174.29	158
Burglary	5	10
Destruction/damage/vandalism	480	102
Total	716.43	378
Total (exempt vandalism)	236.43	276

Again, American criminals seem to have a grudge against the Jews. Though, if you take out the last row of the table, namely vandalism of property, you’ll find out that Muslims are treated worse.

So, my conclusion is, except for vandalism of property, the situation of Muslims and Jewish people are very similar in the US, with Jewish people having a slightly better situation. To analyze the higher rate of vandalism of Jewish properties I need to have the statistics of properties owned by people with different religions. Unfortunately, I don’t have access to these numbers.

Nevertheless, hate crime is horrible, independent of the religion or ethnicity of the victim. This is just how an engineer sees, and plays with, numbers.

p.s. After I finished writing this post, I found a relevant report in the Islamic Republic News Network [Persian],

This report shows that violence against Hispanics and Muslims is more than other groups.

Well, I call this the simplistic approach of an opportunist.

Update: Rebecca discusses the issue further: More on hate crime statistics.

Reader's Comments

Ruth | November 22nd, 2007 at 4:12 am
Hi Kamangir,

The Wikipedia numbers seem to be based on a this 2001 study. Have a look at this compilation:

http://www.adherents.com/rel_USA.html
“This study concluded: “The best, adjusted, survey-based estimates put the adult Muslim population in 2000 at 0.67 percent or 1,401,000, and the total Muslim population at 1,886,000. Even if high-side estimates based on local surveys, figures from mosques, and ancestry and immigration statistics are given more weight than the survey-based numbers, it is hard to accept estimates that Muslims are greater than 1 percent of the population (2,090,000 adults or 2,814,000 total).”"

If you use 0.67% instead of 0.5% for the Muslim percentage in the US population and 1.3% (from the same site) instead of 1.4% for the Jewish percentage, your results look like this:

Jewish Muslim
Aggravated assault 16.92 35.82
Simple assault 44.62 44.78
Intimidation 187.69 117.91
Burglary 5.38 7.46
Destruction/… 516.92 76.12
Total 771.54 282.09
Total
(exempt vandalism) 254.62 205.97

When such small changes (and documented as well!) have such an impact it is better to refrain from drawing any conclusions.

The claim that Islamophobia is the new antisemitism has been proven wrong. That’s all you can extract from the data.
ella | November 22nd, 2007 at 4:35 am
Archer

I think that an important factor in aggravated assault or/and simple assault is an area where people live. Some of the assaults may be connected to gangs, as there are probably more hispanic and black gangs ( some members of the black gangs are muslims) than white or jewish gangs. (I believe that whites go more for white collar crimes - education, you know ;-) ). I also think that the percentage of crimes is usually higher in all immigrant communities (both as victims and as perpetrators) than in communities whose members are second or third generation immigrants. Although there are some differences.
Unfortunately it is, as you said, difficult if not impossible to find out religion of criminals with the exception of hate crimes.
William Graves | November 23rd, 2007 at 3:13 pm
To make sense of these numbers, you have to estimate the measurement
error. For a Poisson Distribution, this is estimated by the square root
of the number of occurrences. Thus the error on the number of
aggravated assaults, 22 instances, is estimated as SQRT(22) = 4.6.
Therefor, you can see that the aggravated assaults in the two populations are the
same within a one sigma error. When you normalize the numbers, you have
to also normalize the error estimates.

You do not report whether crimes against religious minorities are ‘hate’
crimes or simply undifferentiated criminal activity. In fact, most
Muslims or Jews here in the US cannot be casually identified as such
unless they work at it by wearing distinctive clothing, such as a
yalmuka or a Hijab. We have literally hundreds of minority groups
living here from all over the world, and I can’t tell most of them
apart. This is far more true here than, for instance, in Canada.

‘Hate’ crimes are usually identified by the use of ‘hate’ speech in
commission of the crime by the aggressor. The vandalism numbers may
involve ‘hate’ crime if the attack is against an identifiable religious
artifact such as a mosque or a synagog.
Dave | November 25th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
Are you certain that these statistics represent attacks ON these groups BY white Americans? I find often that statistics of this sort can be muddled by acts against the groups by members of their own group.

“Black on black” crime in America accounts for a large part of the crime ‘against’ black people, and thus has little or nothing to do with racism or white antipathy toward black people.

I’m just curious, and have not been able to answer this question myself by reading your work, so I ask it of you instead.

Dave in Texas
Dave | November 25th, 2007 at 3:36 pm
Oops, never mind, I’ve just now managed to get a response to the link on the statistics themselves.

But I still wonder how they classify ‘hate crimes’ and what exactly makes them such. I suspect that agenda-driven people can find ways to inflate these statistics, whether they are well-meaning white leftists or they are otherwise interested in a particular outcome.
Rebecca | November 29th, 2007 at 10:40 pm
Well, the statistics are compiled by the FBI, hardly a left-wing body, based on information forwarded to them by local law enforcement agencies, again, usually not dominated by people on the left-wing side of the political spectrum. Take a look at the FBI website yourself to get a full picture.

Kamangir: Sorry I don’t understand what you mean.