New York, Nov. 1 (TNS): Hate crimes against New York City Muslims were on the rise even before Tuesday’s terror attack in lower Manhattan—but the region’s Pakistanis, Arabs, Turks and other followers of Islam are preparing for more incidents as New York mourns its eight terror victims, US media reported on Wednesday.
According to Newsweek report, the number of crimes against Muslims and people of color often spikes in the U.S. following a terror attack—in this case, one committed by a young Uzbek man who, cops said, emerged from a truck screaming “Allahu Akbar.”
Liberal New York is often upheld as a stronghold of diversity and tolerance, but hate crimes against Muslims were up 560 percent last year, according to Afaf Nasher, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
“This year, reports are coming in that will shatter that number,” she told Newsweek. “Hate crimes are very real in New York, and people do get hassled whether it’s in the street or in schools.”
The New York Police Department’s hate crimes unit reports that half the known hate crimes in the first two quarters of 2017 were against Muslims. The number of hate crimes in New York had already increased by 30 percent in 2016, according to NYPD statistics, with anti-Muslim and sexual orientation issues driving that increase.
Experts are concerned that political rhetoric targeting Muslims and how to keep “them” out of the country will only fan the flames of hate.
“The rhetoric [American] politicians use after an attack has a very strong correlation with hate crimes,” said Harris Zafar, the author of Demystifying Islam and a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community.
“When people after the New York attack say there is a problem with Muslims coming into the country, that there is a problem with mosques, there is fear there will cause a spike of hate crimes against Muslims.
“Our primary concern is what happened in Manhattan and the innocent lives lost and how we stop this radicalization problem,” Zafar added. “But even listening to the rhetoric after the attack of course we can assume there will be more animosity.”
