2008 Hate Crime Survey: Muslims

V. Official Statistics on Violence Against Muslims

There continue to be few official statistics on violent hate crimes against Muslims. The United States is the only country that has been systematically monitoring anti-Muslim crimes over the course of many years, while such monitoring and public reporting has been conducted for the past two years in Sweden. In the United Kingdom, monitoring and reporting on “Islamophobic” hate crimes is most developed in London. Such statistics have been particularly useful in documenting the periodic spikes in incidents that have accompanied terrorist attacks. On June 9, 2008, the government of Canada released the first nationwide hate crime statistics that also included hate crimes against Muslims. Similarly, in 2007 the government of Austria reported on the number of crimes motivated by hatred toward Muslims. Hate crime statistics in France provide information about violence against Muslims through reporting on crimes targeting people of North African origin. Anti-Muslim hate crime data is not collected expressly.

While these efforts to collect data are important, the extent to which these and other hate crime statistics reflect the actual levels of bias-motivated violence against Muslims is questionable. Because hate crime against Muslims frequently contains a combination of racist and anti-religious sentiment, anti-Muslim hate crimes are not always registered as such. Instead, they may be registered as “racist,” “xenophobic,” or under other similar categories. For example, following the June 2008 release of the first national hate crime statistics in Canada, Imam Mohamed Elmasry, national president of the Canadian Islamic Congress, said that hate crimes against Muslims are often misfiled by police. “A Somali family who reports a hate crime, they might put it under black when it’s supposed to be under Muslim. That Somali family should be under Muslim and not under black, because the motivation is really because the woman is wearing a ħijāb. It is easier for the hate crime unit to put the report under black because it’s a visible minority,” reiterated Dr. Elmasry.

Another problem—that of underreporting—persists throughout the region, including in countries where systems for data collection and police outreach to vulnerable communities are well-established. For example, in the aftermath of the attempted bombing at the Glasgow International Airport and subsequent backlash against Muslims, Sohaib Saeed of the Islamic Centre of Edinburgh Trust indicated that the real number of attacks was likely considerably higher than the official figures.

Nonetheless, official efforts are being made in a number of countries to publicly report on anti-Muslim incidents in their countries.

In Austria, the Federal Agency for State Protection and Counter Terrorism of the Ministry of the Interior produces an annual security report. Within the framework of right-wing extremism, the government reported 371 criminal incidents or acts. For the first time in 2007, the organization registered anti-Muslim hate crimes as a separate category, citing two incidents.

On June 9, 2008, the government of Canada released the first national hate crime statistics for 2006. Overall, there were 892 hate-motivated crimes, of which 46 were against Muslims, including 19 classified as violent crimes. The Canadian police register crimes based on ethnicity; therefore religious motivation may have been overlooked in crimes committed against people of Arab and Western Asian descent. Of the 61 cases in this category, 30 were registered as incidents of violence. In addition to the national data, a number of individual police jurisdictions have been reporting on hate crimes. For example, the Toronto Police Department reported nine registrations of hate crimes against Muslims; incidents included a bomb threat, three cases of mischief, a personal threat, and four cases of willful promotion of hatred. The number of registered incidents decreased from fifteen in 2006 to nine in 2007.

In France, official statistics for 2007 registered 707 offenses of racist, xenophobic, or antisemitic nature, a 23.5 percent decline in comparison to 2006. Racist and xenophobic offences, which exclude those motivated by antisemitism, experienced a decline in total numbers, with a 9 percent reduction.

Although the data does not specifically refer to anti-Muslim crimes, the findings identify people of North African origin—who are largely Muslim—as the most affected by racist and xenophobic offenses, accounting for nearly 68 percent of racist violence and 60 percent of racist threats.

In Sweden, in 2006, out of a total of 3,259 reported hate crimes, there were 252 reports of crimes with an  Islamophobic motive. In 2007, there was a decrease to 206 in the number of such crimes reported.

In the United Kingdom, the London Metropolitan Police Service (MET) began registering “Islamophobic” crimes separately from “faith” hate crimes in 2006/2007. This followed a directive in 2006 by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) requesting that U.K. police start recording the religion of the victims of faith-motivated hate crimes. ACPO wanted to obtain a clear picture of community tensions nationwide after reports surfaced of attacks on Muslims after the September 11, 2001, attack and the London bombings in July 2005.

From April 2007 to March 2008, the MET registered 106 Islamophobic incidents and 89 crimes. This marked a significant decrease from the previous year, when the MET registered 206 incidents and 188 crimes. This dramatic decrease appears to follow an overall trend in declining faith hate crimes over the past three years (1,103 crimes in 2005/2006; 823 crimes in 2006/2007 and 521 crimes in 2007/2008).

As concerns prosecutions, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), which covers England and Wales, reported that 27 cases were recorded as religious-aggravated incidents in 2006/2007. This represents a 37.2 percent decrease from the 2005/2006 period, when 43 defendants were charged with religious-aggravated crimes. Of these, 22 defendants (81.5 percent) were prosecuted, compared to 95.3 percent in the previous year. In 17 of the 27 cases, the victim was identified as Muslim.

In the United States, in 2006, the FBI reported 156 incidents and 191 offenses of anti-Islamic nature, involving 208 victims. The offenses included 24 aggravated assaults, 30 simple assaults, 79 cases of intimidation, 1 robbery, 5 burglaries, 51 cases involving destruction or damage to property, and one “other” offense. Among the 1,750 victims of hate crimes motivated by religious hatred, the 208 people who were victims of anti-Islamic prejudice represented about 12 percent of the overall number.

These figures represent an increase over the figures reported by the FBI in 2005. In that year, the organization reported 128 incidents and 146 offenses involving 151 victims. These offenses included 8 aggravated assaults, 27 simple assaults, 64 cases of intimidation, 4 robberies, 3 burglaries, 2 cases of larceny-theft, 36 cases involving destruction or damage to property, and two “other” offenses. An increase could be seen in all categories except that of robbery.

Comprehensive data from nongovernmental sources is generally unavailable, as very few NGOs across the region monitor and publicly report specifically on violent anti-Muslim hate crimes. Overall, the lack of reporting by either official or private sources makes it difficult to assess the official responses to such incidents by the police and in the courts.