December 18, 2015 "Information Clearing House" - "Salon" - There has been a relentless string of attacks on American Muslims in the past month — incidents that have been nothing short of extreme, and enormous in number. In just a few weeks, there have been dozens of attacks throughout the U.S., often several per day.

• On Thanksgiving, a man in Pittsburgh shot a taxi driver in his own cab with a rifle for being Muslim.
• An arsonist set fire to a California mosque.
• Two Muslim women were attacked in Tampa. One was shot at as she drove away from a mosque. The other was nearly driven off the road. Days before, a man threw stones at another Muslim woman as she drove away from a mosque in the same city.
• In Queens, New York, a man shouting “I kill Muslims” beat a deli owner.
• A North Dakota restaurant owned by Muslim Somali refugees was defaced with Nazi graffiti and then firebombed.
• In a Brooklyn restaurant, a customer shouted “Muslim motherfu**er!” and assaulted a Muslim woman.
• A man in a Manhattan eatery screamed out anti-Muslim rhetoric, hit a Muslim worker, and smashed two glass partitions at the food counter.
• In California, a woman hurled hot coffee at a group of Muslims and yelled “Allah is Satan and you are all murderers.”
• A mosque was vandalized in Phoenix.
• On Dec. 10, the Washington, D.C. office of the leading Muslim civil rights organization the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) was evacuated by police after the group received threatening hate mail that read “Die Muslims, die” and contained a foreign substance first believed to be poisonous.

This is just a small sample of the attacks. The list goes on and on.

A study conducted by CAIR and reported by CNN found that, from the beginning of 2015 up to Dec. 8, American mosques and Islamic centers were the scene of at least 63 acts of vandalism, harassment, and anti-Muslim bigotry. A CAIR spokesman noted, however, that this figure is likely drastically underestimated.

Since the Nov. 13 Paris attacks — for which ISIS claimed credit — and the Dec. 2 San Bernardino shooting — which was blamed on Islamic extremism, about which the FBI investigation has raised doubts — the incidence of anti-Muslim attacks has rapidly spiked, to off-the-chart levels.

Where is the outrage? These are Americans. These are innocent civilians. These are members of an oppressed minority.

An estimated one percent of Americans are Muslim. The exact number is difficult to pinpoint, because the census does not ask about religious affiliation. There only only a few million Muslims in the U.S., but the chances of the victim of a hate crime being Muslim are enormously disproportionate.

Meanwhile, it would be hard to imagine less outrage over so many attacks on any other minority group.

Far-right “patriot” groups have organized several hate demonstrations in which dozens of heavily armed white men stand outside of Islamic community centers with anti-Muslim paraphernalia. Photos have circulated widely online of muscular rifle-clad white men following around Muslim women outside of local mosques.

At what other place of worship would this be tolerated? If people with assault rifles stood outside of a Christian church or Jewish synagogue, Americans would explode in fury. Those with the assault rifles might be arrested for threatening worshipers; they might even be shot. When it is Muslims that are threatened, dare I say terrorized, by heavily armed Islamophobes, on the other hand, suddenly the problem is framed as a First Amendment issue.

A Muslim judge in Brooklyn judge was sworn in on the Koran, and she received numerous threats. Anonymous callers said “You are not an American” and “You are a terrorist,” warning “We know where to find you” and “Watch out because we are going to get you.” This is a judge they are threatening.

Last weekend, two mosques were vandalized in southern California. The vandals spray-painted “Jesus” on the front of one and left a plastic hand grenade in the driveway. The fact that the hand grenade was fake shows that, even if they are not directly using violence, the goal of these bigots is to instill terror within American Muslims, to make them afraid to leave their homes and be part of the community.

Many Muslim friends and colleagues have told me they are frightened each and every day they go outside. They say the atmosphere of violent hatred is even worse than what they experienced immediately after 9/11.

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