Alwaght- A new poll shows that Muslims in the United States are discriminated and more scared for their personal safety than any other religious group in the country.
That is a part of several findings from a new opinion poll commissioned by the Institute for Social Policy Understanding, which surveyed both American Muslims and Americans of other faiths to illustrate differences in how various religious groups are experiencing the current political climate.
Overall, 60 percent of American Muslims said they had been subjected to religious-based discrimination of some form over the past year, compared to 38 percent of Jewish Americans and 11 percent of Catholics.
According to the poll, 38 percent of Muslims surveyed said they now fear for their personal safety from white supremacist groups following the results of the 2016 election. By comparison, 27 percent of Jewish Americans polled felt the same, while just 11 percent of Protestants and 8 percent of Catholics shared that view.
Among those who reported traveling internationally over the past year, 30 percent of Muslims reported being stopped for additional screening at the border. By contrast, 13 percent of Jews and 11 percent of Catholics and Protestants reported the same.
Muslim children not spared
Meanwhile, Muslim children also face the most religious-based bullying in schools. According to the poll, 42 percent of Muslims with children in K-12 schools have reported bulling of their children due to their religious faith during the past year. Jewish Americans reported the second-highest level of bullying, with 23 percent saying their kids received bullying due to their faith over the past year; 20 percent of Protestants and just 6 percent of Catholics reported the same.
The Institute for Social Policy Understanding says American Muslim Poll 2017: Muslims at the Crossroads, offers a timely and groundbreaking look into the US Muslim community. From early on in a deeply divisive presidential election cycle until today, US Muslims have been at the center of heated social and political debates.
President Trump fuelling Islamphobia
US president Donald Trump fuelled Islamophobia during his campaigns and has gone ahead to implement policies seen as grossly discriminating Muslims including imposing a travel ban on passengers from six Muslim majority countries.
Trump’s Muslim ban has been termed a racist, Islamophobic and a state-sponsored provocation which flies in the face of America’s self-proclaimed values of freedom and equality
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Meanwhile, Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, says there has been an unprecedented increase in incidents of attack on Mosque and Islamic centers across the country this year.
In a report, CAIR says it mapped 33 incidents from January 1 to March 20, 2017, where mosques were targets of threats, vandalism or arson. The incidents, tallied by CAUR, span 19 states from Florida to Hawaii. By comparison: During the same time period in 2016, CAIR counted just 17 incidents.
Anti-Muslim extremist groups on the rise
Another report published in February showed that the number of hate groups specifically targeting Muslims in the US has nearly tripled in the past year with Islamophobic hate crime hitting new records.
Researchers The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) attributed the dramatic spike to Trump's campaign, saying his success “energized” the radical right.
The number of anti-Muslim organizations known to be operating in the country rose from just 34 in 2015 to 101 in 2016, according to the left-leaning non-profit's Annual Census of Hate Groups and Extremist Organizations.
In the first 10 days after, Trump's election, the SPLC documented 867 bias-related incidents, including more than 300 that targeted immigrants or Muslims.
Anti-Muslim hatred and bigotry have gone mainstream across the US with the country's president being the flag bearer of Islamophobia. Trump’s father was a member of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), the notorious White Supremacists group that lynched blacks and torched their churches, often with worshippers inside them. Trump may not officially be a member of the KKK but his conduct in turning on the Muslims is no different.
Long history of oppression in the US
What is happening to Muslims in the US comes as no surprise as the US has a long history of oppressing and mistreating people. It started with the massacre of First Nations people or the original inhabitants of America, followed by the African American brought on slave ships. Then it was the turn of people of other minorities including Chinese, Japanese and Latinos. In the 1960s, African Americans were again suppressed and brutalized for demanding equal rights. Today, the US establishment is targeting Muslims who come from all racial backgrounds and nationalities.
