A California State University research group that monitors suspected hate crimes against American Muslims says it’s aware of 38 such incidents since the Nov. 13 terror attacks in Paris, triple the usual average of 12.6 per month. The New York Times spoke to Brian Levin of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism:
The frequency of the recent attacks has not reached the levels seen in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when there were hundreds of attacks on Muslims, and some Sikhs mistaken for Muslims, but Mr. Levin said they were similar types of hate-crime attacks.
“I’m saddened by this but not surprised,” he said. “Whenever we see intergroup conflicts making headlines, we often see a spike in hate crime accompanying it.”
None of the incidents appear to have involved a victim being killed, though a 38-year-old Muslim cab driver in Pittsburgh survived after being shot in the back on Thanksgiving day by a passenger who had allegedly complained about ISIS and asked the driver if he was Pakistani. (The driver/victim is a native of Morocco.)
