(NewsNation) — The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) reported receiving its highest number of anti-Muslim bias complaints in 2023, in a new Civil Rights Report.
CAIR says it took in 8,061 bias reports last year, with nearly half of them coming in the last three months of the year after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel.
CAIR's executive director Nihad Awad joined NewsNation's "Morning in America" to discuss the troubling trend, saying it the largest in the organization's 30 years of recording incidents against Muslims.
"Whenever there is any tension and conflict in the way, our media, our politicians handle the issues, that reflects on all of us citizens of this country because we are all impacted by the behavior of people around us, based on the news," Awad said.
CAIR says it records incidents of bias using 20 different categories. Overall, the top category in 2023 was complaints of immigration and asylum cases with 1,637 reports, followed by 1,201 reports of employment discrimination and 688 complaints of discrimination linked to education settings.
"As we all have seen all over the news, the stabbing to death of Wadea Al-Fayoume, the six year old boy, American-Palestinian in the suburb of Chicago by the landlord of his family, and also the stabbing 12 times of his mother by the same individual," Awad said.
"These are some very graphic tragedies that are a result of the negative atmosphere that we are living in. Also the shooting of three college students in Vermont. And, you know, I can just sit here and give you so many so many stories. Behind the 8,000 cases there are lives," Awad added.
In the report, CAIR included a series of recommendations, urging public officials and corporate and education leaders who are discussing the events taking place in Israel, to give “equal weight and attention” to “Palestinian suffering.”