Crying wolf: is America a dangerous place for its Muslim citizens?

SPOKESMEN for Muslim groups in the West have made a large number and wide variety of claims against the societies in which they live. They speak of racism and discrimination, with the alleged misdeeds they cite ranging from defamation in the media and in Hollywood to physical attacks.

Capitol Hill and the White House seem to think these claims have a basis in fact. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the Senate passed a resolution condemning "any acts of violence or discrimination against any Americans, including Arab Americans and American Muslims"; shortly thereafter, George W. Bush warned that intimidation of Muslims "should not and ... will not stand in America." Presidents and Senates don't make statements of that type without believing that the situation calls for them. But does it?

If America were in the grip of anti-Muslim ferment, we could expect to see a major increase in hate crimes against Muslims and a corresponding lack of receptiveness to Muslim entreaties in the government, the media, and the public. According to a number of Muslim and Arab advocacy organizations, this is precisely what is happening.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), in "Unequal Protection," its civil-rights report for 2005, provides several graphs registering dramatic increases in reported civil-rights and hate crimes cases: 1,522 civil-rights cases in 2004, up from 1,019 in 2003 and 602 in 2002; and 141 "actual and potential" hate crimes in 2004, as against 93 in 2003 and 42 in 2002. The Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) too, in its 2001-2002 report on hate crimes, alleged 165 violent incidents from January to October of 2002, amounting to a "significant increase over most years in the past decade."

The reality is rather different. Fabricated incidents and frivolous complaints have abounded in these reports and others like them. For example, no fewer than five cases of arson or vandalism of Muslim businesses appear to have been the result of attempted insurance fraud on the part of the businesses' owners. In two cases, CAIR protested on behalf of those alleging hate crimes, Mirza Akram and Amjad Abunar, demanding investigations--and then was struck dumb when each man was charged with arson. Other incidents reported by CAIR cannot be substantiated. There are no police records to back up the alleged explosion of a bomb outside a Houston mosque in July 2004. Another case CAIR cites--a mosque fire in Springfield, Mass.--was eventually ruled to be a juvenile robbery in which the fire was lit to obliterate evidence of a break-in, and was not motivated by anti-Muslim bias. Past ADC reports have referred to egg-pelting incidents against Muslims on a university campus that, on inspection, proved in one case not to have had an obvious hateful motive, and in the other to have been a fabrication by the supposed victim.

Turning to the most serious crime-murder--of eight reported by CAIR in the year following September 11,2001, all but one had ambiguous motives and on investigation could not be attributed to anti-Muslim motivation. More recently, Daniel Pipes and Sharon Chadha took a microscope to some incidents in CAIR's latest report and concluded that, of "twenty 'anti-Muslim hate crimes' in 2004 that CAIR describes, at least six are invalid." Findings like these fatally compromise the credence that can be paid to CAIR's reports.

Beyond citing examples that appear to be outright fabrications, the authors of CAIR's reports show a remarkable ingenuity in defining what constitutes an expression of anti-Muslim bias. Hollywood has been a particular target of Muslim groups for its supposed insensitivity. The ADC decries "the extremely serious problem of negative stereotyping of Arabs and Arab Americans in the entertainment industry." With metronomic regularity, Muslim groups protest action films dealing with Middle Eastern terrorists for reinforcing a supposed culture of intolerance and racism. To Westerners, they present their argument as an appeal for fair play. Elsewhere--particularly in the Middle East--their complaint takes on an anti-Semitic complexion--the culprit now being conscienceless Jewish domination of a Hollywood that slavishly serves the interests of Israel, or of the U.S. military-industrial complex, or whatever variant thereof the subject and occasion demand.

In fact, nothing very sinister is afoot. Hollywood has always dealt in a range of stock characters and situations, and this is not reprehensible when it has a basis in fact. It is not malignity, but reality, that leads filmmakers to depict Nazis as Germans or World War II Japanese generals as imperialists. Likewise, documentaries and films on terrorism that are inspired by actual events tend to tell Middle Eastern, not Scandinavian, stories. If anything, Hollywood has latterly gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid offending Muslims, dragging other groups into service as terrorist villains. In The Sum of All Fears, the Middle Eastern terrorists of Tom Clancy's novel were transformed, following CAIR's intercession with the director, into European neo-Nazis. In The Interpreter, sub-Saharan Africans replaced the Muslims originally intended as terrorist villains. Recently, Fox acceded to CAIR's concerns over an episode of its series 24 that depicted Muslim terrorists by announcing it would give airtime to CAIR for public-service messages.

Hollywood's pusillanimity in the face of criticism from Muslim groups mirrors a sometimes misplaced sensitivity and presumption of guilt displayed by other institutions. CAIR is a Saudi-funded organization whose founder is on record praising suicide bombers and saying he would like the Koran to be the highest authority in America, and whose personnel have been implicated in crimes consistent with these positions. One would expect that, with such a record, CAIR would be shunned. To the contrary, it is courted by government, law-enforcement agencies, civil-liberties groups, and religious bodies. Corporations too have been obsequious, perhaps because commerce is highly sensitive to organizations willing and able to trumpet claims of discrimination and insensitivity. As a result, Arabic-script logos deemed offensive to Muslims have been removed by advertisers; a broadcaster who offended CAIR has been fired; and Internet providers have taken down websites filled with content hostile to Islam--something unlikely to occur in respect of anti-Jewish hate sites.

It is something of an Islamist triumph that such a weak case for corrective action has drawn such wide support in a country where Muslims have done exceedingly well. For the truth is that American society is generally respectful of Muslim needs and concerns. Muslim men and women who have lost their jobs for violating employer dress codes (by insisting on beards or traditional garb), or who have suffered even inadvertent discrimination in the workplace, have been either generously compensated or reinstated. Conversely, other groups suffering more from hate crimes tend to get ignored. In 2004, the FBI reported 1,374 crimes motivated by religious bias, of which 954 (67.8 percent) were committed against Jews, but only 156 (12.7 percent) against Muslims. This has not resulted in allegations of an anti-Jewish crime wave in the United States, much less in concerted action to address pervasive racism against Jews.

On any serious index of hate crimes and discrimination against Muslims, Americans are not significantly represented. We should remember this truth next time complaints emerge from CAIR and likeminded groups. In particular, the mainstream media should treat these claims without credulity and independently verify allegations; government and institutions should shun radical pressure groups; and corporations, perhaps the most vulnerable target of campaigns alleging racism and insensitivity, should deploy strategies other than caving in.

Mr. Mandel is director of the Zionist Organization of America's Center for Middle East Policy, a fellow in history at Melbourne University, and author of H.V. Evatt and the Establishment of Israel: The Undercover Zionist.