c. 1997 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ Incidents of anti-Muslim violence, discrimination, bias and harassment increased three-fold in the last year, according to a new study by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

The report,”The Status of Muslim Civil Rights in the United States: 1997,”was released at a Tuesday (April 15) news conference and said there were 240 anti-Muslim”incidents and experiences”ranging across society from the workplace to the military and prison. Eighty such incidents were reported last year.

The largest number of cases _ 87 _ involved the workplace.”This report comes at a time (when) the American Muslim community is experiencing growth and increased visibility,”said Mohamed Nimer, director of the CAIR Research Center and author of the report.

Nimer said anti-Muslim incidents are triggered by what he called three”identifying factors”whereby a person is singled out as a Muslim.

Chief among these is”religious practice,”which includes women wearing the customary dress and head covering, called”hijab”in Arabic, or men wearing a beard and cap, called”kufi.”The other identifying factors are ethnicity _ physical features or a”Muslim-sounding”name _ and association with the Muslim community through political activism or religious leadership.

According to the report, 53 percent of the cases documented in the study related to religious practice, with 50 cases involving the hijab and women who were allegedly discriminated against for wearing the traditional garb. The head coverings are worn in accordance with the Koran, Islam’s scripture, which mandates modesty from both men and women. Many of these cases involved women fired or suspended from their job.

CAIR has been involved in cases involving several national corporations over incidents involving the head coverings and Nimer said his group had successfully challenged the discriminatory practices in a number of cases.

Most recently, in February, a California woman who worked at Office Depot was reinstated after being suspended for wearing her head covering to work. McDonald’s Corp., Holiday Inn and Bradlees have also reached agreements allowing Muslim women to return to their jobs wearing their customary garb.

About 10 percent of the cases cited in the report ended in victory, Nimer said.”Muslims won rights, apologies were issued to injured parties,”he said.

Earlier this year, CAIR published and circulated in the business community an employer’s guide of Islamic religious practices meant to raise the consciousness of managers and executives that employ Muslims.

Anti-Muslim sentiment reached a high following the April 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, when as many as 200 incidents of harassment and violence were reported to CAIR in the three days following the bombing, the report noted. Early news reports suggested Arab militants might be responsible for the bombing.

Those incidents were not included in the 1996 study, because, according to Nimer,”these were somewhat unusual circumstances that would not fit in a normal trend analysis.”But the volume of incidents prompted CAIR to begin documenting them.

Although the number of workplace discrimination incidents increased from 10 percent to 57 percent, the study reported a small decrease in the number of violent anti-Muslim incidents. Although the number of violent incidents declined by only one, the percent of such cases dropped from 25 percent to 8 percent because of the large increase in the overall number of incidents.

Nimer said the largest number of anti-Muslim incidents were directed against Arabs and Arab-Americans because many Americans associate Islam with those groups. He said 43 percent of those who reported incidents to CAIR were Arab or Arab-American. About 25 percent were African or African-American and 8 percent were European-Americans.

Nimer called for greater public awareness of issues affecting Muslims, and urged university religious and ethnic studies departments to devote attention and resources to the Muslim community.”Eventually we hope that it (the report) will promote understanding and tolerance,”he said.

MJP END LEBOWITZ