Brendan O’Neill, a columnist for the London Telegraph, points out that there was no mob of anti-Muslim fanatics roaming the streets after the Boston bombers were found to be Muslim jihadis. He goes on to note that those who accused Americans of being anti-Muslim bigots do it every time there’s a terror attack by Muslims, and every time the anti-Muslim mobs fail to materialize.
So just hours after the bombing at the Boston Marathon, even before we knew who was responsible, there was media handwringing over the masses’ potentially intolerant response. Part of the reason David Sirota of Salon infamously hoped the Boston bomber would turn out be a white American is because he was fearful of the “societal response” if the bomber were a Muslim, concerned there would be “collective slandering” of Muslims by Americans. Likewise, two days after the attack, the Guardian published a piece implying America is already a country where the ill-educated think “all Muslims are terrorists”, so things could get really hairy if “the perpetrator of the Boston bombings turns out to be a Muslim”. There was a tsunami of post-Boston commentary about “the damage that Islamophobia can cause”, about the “ignorance and prejudice [that emerge] in the aftermath of a terrorist attack”, about Americans undergoing a “collective freakout steeped in Islamophobia”.
He links to several articles that follow the rise of hate crimes against Muslims, in which the authors note the steep rise in anti-Muslim hate crimes. Like a rise of 27% in the U.K.–from 32 to 43 anti-Muslim hate crimes.
What he does not point out is who are the target of the majority of religious hate crimes in the U.S.: Jews. Or who are the targets of violent attacks and threats in the U.K.: Jews.
In this interactive Scripps-Howard article, you can mouse over each state and note that there are so few attacks against Muslims that they are, effectively, outliers. But you have to scroll way down to read these statistics:
Anti-Jewish hate crimes decreased nationally by 17 percent from 931 incidents in 2009 to 771 in 2011, but Jews were still the most targeted religious group by far. Anti-Catholic hate crimes rose from 51 to 67, and anti-Protestant incidents grew from 38 to 44.
How does that compare to anti-Muslim hate crimes?
Collectively, crimes targeting Muslims spiked from 107 in 2009 to 160 in 2010, a 49.5 percent increase and the largest since 2001, according to the FBI. There were 157 incidents in 2011, the last year for which federal hate-crime data is available.
There were five times as many attacks on Jews in the U.S. as there were attacks on Muslims.
It’s the same in the U.K. if you exclude the internet complaints. Let’s face it, trying to keep track of anti-Semitic remarks on the internet would be a Herculean task. Read the comments at Comment is Free lately? All you have to do is check the comments on any website that mentions–well, anything. I have seen comments on subjects that have nothing to do with religion, world events, Israel, or Muslims still devolve into anti-Semitism. So let’s just look at the meat of the matter in the anti-Semitic incidents in the U.K.
The CST published its annual statistics in February and recorded 640 anti-Semitic incidents across the country in 2012, compared to 608 incidents in 2011.
Of these there were 69 ‘violent anti-Semitic assaults’ in 2012, including two classified as extreme violence; 53 incidents of damage and desecration of Jewish property; 467 incidents of abusive behaviour, including verbal abuse, anti-Semitic graffiti and one-off cases of hate mail; 39 direct anti-Semitic threats; and 12 cases of mass-mailed anti-Semitic leaflets or emails.
Compare that with the anti-Muslim incidents:
A government-backed project set up to monitor anti-Muslim hate has recorded 632 incidents in its first year.
Three-quarters of the incidents recorded by Tell Mama occurred online, with Twitter particularly highlighted as a source of abuse. In cases of verbal or street-based abuse those behind the project say it is Islamic clothing, like hijabs, that singles people out.
In January a pig’s head was left in the garden of an Afghan family in London. There have been a number of incidents involving pork-based items being left at mosques and in December a cross wrapped in ham was left outside the home of a Muslim family in Bingham, Nottinghamshire.
Same number of incidents, and yet a vastly different makeup. Jews are being physically attacked around the world. Muslims are being called names. And in a rare few cases, Muslims are being attacked by bigots.
Of course, there is also something that neither article delves into: Most anti-Semitic attacks in the U.S. and the U.K. (and Europe) are by Muslims. Jews are leaving Europe again, especially in countries like France, which has both the largest Jewish and Muslim populations, because the country is not doing enough to keep its Jews safe from attacks. Attacks on Jews are up 58% in France, and that includes murder and beatings by Muslims–sorry, “African youths”. Hating Jews is very, very popular in France again. (Or still.)
So cry me a river about “Islamophobia”, which is the biggest piece of made-up bullshit since Yasser Arafat thought of calling the Arab refugees of 1948 “Palestinians”. The real attacks on people over world events seem to always boil down to one people: The Jews. This, in spite of the fact that there have been exactly zero Jewish terrorist attacks in the U.S., the U.K., or Europe. And Ariel Sharon was vilified for pointing this out.
From the sounds of it, the ferment of French Jewry’s plight has been a full decade in coming and not just a few years as it’s been assumed. It’s stunning to remember the way that former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon–at the height of the Second Intifada no less–infamously instructed French Jews to move to Israel for their own safety. His remarks were blasted by French leaders–both Jewish and not–including the French foreign ministry, who called on Sharon for an explanation of his “unacceptable comments.”
Sharon was right then, and he’s right now. The Jews of Europe are at risk. Not the Muslims.