One reason Muslims need their own civil rights organizations is that traditional civil rights groups often ignore anti-Muslim, anti-South Asian and anti-Arab attacks in their reports, thereby obscuring the real extent of the problem.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, a prominent civil rights and anti-hate organization, has produced a report, “Terror from the Right: 75 plots, conspiracies and racist rampages since Oklahoma City.” Of the 75 listed only one involved attacks on Muslims (St. Petersberg, FL, 2002). It’s not credible that in the eight years since September 11th and the Islamophobic swell of fear and hatred it prompted, that only one attack could have made the cut. Here’s how SPLC describes its list:
What follows is a detailed listing of major terrorist plots and racist rampages that have emerged from the American radical right in the years since Oklahoma City. These have included plans to bomb government buildings, banks, refineries, utilities, clinics, synagogues, mosques, memorials and bridges; to assassinate police officers, judges, politicians, civil rights figures and others; to rob banks, armored cars and other criminals; and to amass illegal machine guns, missiles, explosives and biological and chemical weapons. Each of these plots aimed to make changes in America through the use of political violence. Most contemplated the deaths of large numbers of people — in one case, as many as 30,000, or 10 times the number murdered on Sept. 11, 2001.
Neither the recent suspicious death of an imam in Southern California nor the assault on a Muslim woman in Seattle are mentioned anywhere on the site.
Below the jump, a list of eight acts of violence perpetrated against Muslims (or people mistaken as Muslims) since September 11th, 2001, that prompted federal prosecution as reported by the US Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, only one of which appears on the SPLC list:
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