Durbin Senate hearing: US Muslims face violence FBI: Jews much more likely to

Muslims in the United States face ongoing discrimination and violence in actions that threaten basic freedoms in the nation, a US Senate hearing was told Tuesday.

The hearing was called to discuss protecting the civil rights of American Muslims, just weeks after another panel hotly debated the threat posed by homegrown Islamists.

Democratic Assistant Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin, who called the hearing, said a “backlash” which began after the attacks of September 11, 2001, continues against “innocent Muslims, Arabs, south Asians and Sikhs.”

“American Muslims are entitled to the same constitutional protections as other Americans,” Durbin said, adding that this is an issue of “not just free exercise of religion but freedom of speech.”

Thomas Perez, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, told the Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing: “We continue to see a steady stream of violence against Muslims… The good news is that with each wave of intolerance, our nation has responded by passing news laws.”

And with the smell of emotions clouding reality still oozing from Durbin’s pores….

The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s most recent hate crime statistics, released Monday, show that crimes committed due to racial biases are the most prevalent and that — despite a great deal of rhetoric to the contrary — for crimes committed due to a religious bias, it is still safer to be Muslim than it is to be Jew.

According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program in 2009 there were 8,336 victims of hate crimes. 48.8 percent of those victims were targeted because of a racial bias, 18.9 percent because of a religious bias, and 17.8 percent because of a bias against a person’s sexual orientation.

There were 4,057 victims of racially motivated hate crimes. Over 70 percent of those victims were targeted because of an anti-black bias. The second highest group targeted because of race were victims of an anti-white bias (16.5 percent).

Of the 1,575 victims of a religious bias, over 70 percent were victims of an anti-Jewish bias. The second highest group, at 8.4 percent, were the victims of an anti-Muslim bias.

When are we going to have Anti Jew hearings?

Anti Black Hearings?

Anti White hearings?

Anti Bokonononist hearings?

Anti Zoroastrian hearings?

Anti Yankee fans in New England hearings?