Major spike in bias incidents and hostile workplace against Muslims in US over Gaza war

Israel's war on Gaza has sparked a significant spike in recorded bias acts and workplace hostility across the US, according to civil rights advocates.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, which has been tracking bias incidents against Muslims since the mid-1990s, has recorded more in 2023 than in any other year. Among the most high-profile cases was the 14 October fatal stabbing of Wadea al-Fayoume, a six-year-old Palestinian boy, by his family's landlord near Chicago. 

"It goes along at a pretty even clip, and then in October, it shoots through the roof," Corey Saylor, research and advocacy director at CAIR, told The New Arab. "There's no question in my mind, if the data doesn't tell the story, when somebody comes in and when the team deals with it, almost all the cases have to do with Palestine."

In 2023, CAIR saw 8,061 complaints of anti-Muslim incidents, up 56 per cent from the previous year, with nearly half of the reported cases occurring between October and December, coinciding with the war on Gaza. The report shows an even higher number of anti-Muslim incidents than the spike that followed former President Donald Trump's Muslim ban.

The 2023 incidents include discrimination in asylum, employment and education, as well as hate crimes and other bias incidents. 

The last major spike in such incidents was in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Though 2023 saw more reported bias incidents, according to CAIR's data, Saylor doesn't believe this period has seen more incidents than the post-9/11 era. 

"I do not believe this wave was worse than after 9/11. I think we were just smaller then," Saylor said. "As someone who worked through both of them, it has felt similar — an endless wave of people calling."

In light of this period of increased anti-Muslim bias incidents, CAIR has urged mosques to increase security and vigilance. Moreover, they are encouraging people in their daily lives to be cognizant of their First Amendment rights in order to be effective in their activism.

"The biggest and most important thing you have is your right to free speech, but that's the government. If I'm at a protest, I can say what I want within basic ethics," said Saylor. "What a lot of people don't understand is that schools and workplaces can have different rules. Understanding the policies of the environment where you are is critical to being an effective Palestinian advocate." 

"The thing we usually advise people to look for is unequal treatment of viewpoints. You want to document that," he added.

CAIR's 2023 report follows a drop in complaints in 2022, a short-lived period of optimism for the Muslim civil rights group.