Florida, Texas among States with Most Civil Rights Complaints by Muslims, Group Says

WASHINGTON — A report released by a prominent national Islamic civil rights group said Florida and Texas, along with seven other states, accounted for an overwhelming majority of civil rights complaints the organization received from Muslims last year.

The report released by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the largest Islamic civil liberties group in America with 33 offices and chapters nationwide and in Canada, also found a significant rise in complaints related to immigration issues.

California, Illinois, the District of Columbia, Florida, Texas, New York, Virginia, Michigan, New Jersey and Ohio accounted for more than 80 percent of the 2,467 anti-Muslim cases the group received last year. The figure was the highest ever recorded by the group, which started documenting anti-Muslim incidents following the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

California accounted for the most number of incidents, with 709 reported last year. Florida was fourth, with 168 complaints, up from 112 in 2005. Texas came in at fifth with 157 such complaints, down slightly from 164 in 2005 but still recording a much higher number than the 104 complaints received in 2004.

However, the director of the council's bureau in Houston said those figures tend to be misleading.

"I would definitely say it's higher," Shariq Abdul Ghani said. "The only cases that we can include in the report are the ones that we have received."

"You find that many Muslims are afraid to report issues of harassment, whether it be at the airport or at the place of employment," he said, adding that fear of retaliation and attracting unwanted attention as well as unfamiliarity with U.S. laws are all factors behind a general reluctance to come forward.

"We're trying to get people to speak out, and we recently launched a civil rights awareness campaign," he added.

Altaf Ali, the executive director for the council's bureau in Miami, described the huge rise in the number of anti-Muslim incidents reported in Florida as "very concerning and alarming." Last year, a mosque in Melbourne, Fla., was targeted in a sniper attack during Ramadan evening prayers, while a South Florida mosque was vandalized by anti-Muslim graffiti.

"Definitely, there's an increase in discrimination," said Sofian Abdelaziz Zakkout, director of the Miami-based American Muslim Association of America. He said he has spoken to many Muslim members who have reported being discriminated against.

"Our community is exhausted," he said. "When it comes to the hijab (head covering), when it comes to looking for employment, as soon as they know you are a Muslim or Arab, they will deny you most of the time. People don't understand Islam, and this is what makes it worse."

The report also highlighted a significant increase in the number of complaints by Muslims over immigration issues, primarily relating to citizenship and naturalization delays. Under federal law, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) must grant or deny citizenship within 120 days of an applicant's examination. Data released by the Department of Homeland Security reveals that nearly 2.2 million applicants have waited for 180 days or more for their citizenship processing, including 41,000 who have waited for three years or more.

"They have been living in this country, paying their taxes, taken the test and passed it, and now they're waiting," said Arsalan Iftikhar, the council's national legal director. "There have certainly been backlogs," USCIS spokesman Bill Wright said. "But we've already had major backlog reductions, and we're working very hard to continue to bring that backlog down."

According to figures provided by the department, USCIS eliminated the backlog for naturalization applications from nearly 3.8 million in 2004 to just over 1.1 million in July 2006.

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