Violence Against Muslim Americans on the Rise Following Paris Attacks

Following the Paris attacks and San Bernardino, California attacks, hate crimes against Muslim Americans and mosques across the United States have tripled. New data shows that dozens of attacks have occurred just within a one month period.

The assaults include attacks on hijab-wearing students; arsons and vandalism at mosques; and shootings and death threats at Islamic-owned businesses, an analysis by a California State University research group has found.

There has been an average of 12.6 suspected hate crimes against Muslims in the United States per month, based on F.B.I. data analyzed by the research group with the rate of attacks tripling since the attacks in Paris on Nov. 13.

In Pittsburgh, a passenger in a taxi shot the driver, who was Muslim, after the passenger angrily asked him about Daesh and ridiculed the Prophet Muhammad.

“A week after the Paris attacks, a sixth-grade girl in the Bronx was reportedly attacked by three boys who tried to take off the hijab she was wearing, punched her and called her Daesh,” the New York Times reported.

In the similar incident just days later, a college student in a parking lot in San Diego reported a similar assault, with her attacker yelling anti-Muslim insults.

“The terrorist attacks, coupled with the ubiquity of these anti-Muslim stereotypes seeping into the mainstream, have emboldened people to act upon this fear and anger,” said Brian Levin, a criminologist at California State University, San Bernardino, the New York Times reported.

Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said, “We’re seeing so many of these things happening that it’s unbelievable,” he said in an interview. “It’s off the chart, and I don’t think we’ve seen the end of it.”