The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today released new civil rights data showing it received 3,578 complaints during the last three months of 2023 amid an ongoing wave of anti-Muslim protests and anti-Palestinian hate.
The country's largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization said the figure represents a 178 percent increase in complaints received in the last three months of 2023 compared to the same period last year.
Among this subset of complaints from October to December, she said, employment discrimination (19 percent), hate crimes and incidents (13 percent) and educational discrimination (13 percent) were the three most reported categories.
“In the face of relentless hate and false smears, American Muslims, Arabs, and a broad coalition of Jews, Christians, African Americans, Asian Americans, and others continue to call for justice for Palestine,” CAIR Research and Advocacy Director Corey Saylor said in a statement. “This coalition knows that the way to stop the hate is to end the apartheid, occupation, and genocide taking place in Palestine.
“Despite this disturbing wave of prejudice against Muslim, Arab-American and Palestinian communities, we are witnessing an impressive resilience in the face of intolerance,” said CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad.
On Friday, CAIR welcomed a preliminary ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the UN's principal judicial body, which finds South Africa's genocide charge against the Israeli government plausible, allows the case to proceed, and orders the Israeli government to take various steps to prevent genocidal acts and report back to the ICJ within a month.
CAIR called the figures in its latest data release for December “astonishing.”
Earlier in 2023, CAIR had reported that 2022 showed the first drop in incoming complaints to the organization since it began tracking data in 1995.
This publication was supported in whole or part by funding provided by the State of California, administered by the CaliFornia State Library.
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