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To: tejek who wrote (135)	11/30/2002 3:52:06 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 603

Nation & World: Tuesday, November 26, 2002 Attacks against Muslims soar By Curt Anderson The Associated Press WASHINGTON — Muslims and people who are or appear to be of Middle Eastern descent were reported as victims of hate crimes more often last year than ever before, a consequence of the fear and suspicion that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the FBI said yesterday. Although the number of incidents has tapered off, many Muslims remain worried about a new backlash if the United States goes to war with Iraq or is hit with another major attack by Islamic extremists. "There's a great deal of apprehension in the Muslim community as to the demonization of Islam," said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "A lot of us feel that our patriotism is always suspect." The FBI's annual hate-crimes report found that incidents targeting people, institutions and businesses identified with the Islamic faith increased from 28 in 2000 to 481 in 2001 — a jump of 1,600 percent. Muslims previously had been among the least-targeted religious groups. The increase, the FBI said, happened "presumably as a result of the heinous incidents that occurred on Sept. 11." The statistics did not specify how many of the incidents occurred after Sept. 11. Hooper said the FBI figures probably represent only a small portion of the true number of hate crimes, because many of the estimated 7 million Muslims in the United States do not report such incidents to authorities. Since Sept. 11, the Justice Department has prosecuted 11 civil-rights cases under its "Backlash Discrimination Initiative" and investigated an additional 403. Seventy others were prosecuted by state and local authorities. One man was sentenced to 51 months in prison for attempting to set fire to a Pakistani-American restaurant in Salt Lake City; another got two months in prison and a $5,000 fine for leaving a threatening voice-mail message on Sept. 12, 2001, for James Zogby, president of the Arab-American Institute in Washington, D.C. The Justice Department also has held 250 community forums nationwide to try to ease tensions that led to violence against Muslims, people of Middle Eastern descent and South Asian Sikhs, who are often mistaken for Muslims. Hate crimes, defined as crimes motivated by prejudice, are somewhat subjective, because many times they result from witness and victim accounts given to police rather than convictions in court. Overall allegations of crime motivated by hate rose just over 20 percent from 2000 to 2001, from 8,063 to 9,730 incidents — still only a fraction of the 11.8 million serious crimes reported to the FBI last year. Part of the increase stems from a higher number of law-enforcement agencies that supplied the data to the FBI in 2001. Despite the increase, Muslims remain behind blacks, Jews and homosexuals in the numbers of reported hate crimes. There were 2,899 incidents against blacks in 2001, about the same as the year before, and just over 1,000 against Jews, down slightly from the year before. Almost 1,400 incidents involved crimes against homosexuals, and whites were targeted in 891 cases, the FBI said. Whites comprised the vast majority of known offenders for all cases, at 6,054, followed by blacks at 1,882. The FBI does not compile information on how many offenders were arrested and prosecuted; a "known offender" means only that the alleged offender's race is known, officials said. President Bush and others in the administration repeatedly have said that Islam is a peaceful religion and that the huge majorities of Arabs or other Middle Eastern ethnic groups in the United States are upstanding citizens. Copyright © 2002 The Seattle Times Company