It’s hard to prove any hate crime. But for Muslim victims, it’s especially tough

One significant hurdle is simply getting hate crimes against Muslims reported to authorities. FBI statistics show that about 160 Muslims were victimized in hate crimes each year between 2011 and 2013. This number is a result of significant underreporting. American Muslims experience prejudice far more often than they report to authorities. When asked anonymously in a 2011 Pew poll if they had been threatened or attacked in the past year, 6 percent of Muslims said they had. Given that the Muslim population was 2.6 million in 2010, responses to the Pew poll suggest that about 156,000 Muslims were victims of hate crimes. The Justice Department notes that two out of every three hate crimes are not reported because victims believe that police cannot or will not help. This is especially true for Muslims, who have been targets of massive surveillance, deportation, questioning and other harassment by local and federal law enforcement during the past 14 years. That excessive scrutiny has eroded the trust necessary for victims to report hate crimes.

Even if a victim knows how to navigate the law enforcement system and file a hate-crime complaint, there are dynamics that may make it more difficult for Muslim victims to win convictions. In surveys conducted in 2006 and 2007, Georgetown University researchers found that Muslims, whether or not they are American, face severe stereotypes in the United States. Americans stereotype Muslims as far more untrustworthy and violent than whites, blacks, Hispanics and Asians. This can create barriers to gaining empathy from police, attorneys, judges and juries.

Even with these hurdles, a chilling truth remains: The number of reported hate crimes motivated by anti-Muslim bias is five times higher than before 9/11. From Oregon to Ohio, mosques and Islamic centers have been torched and defaced. The lives of innocent Muslim workers have been threatened, and people even suspected of being Muslim have been killed by perpetrators invoking the 2001 terrorist attacks. In December, a 15-year-old Muslim, Abdisamad Sheikh-Hussein, was run down and killed in Kansas City, Mo., by a man in an SUV who had a history of anti-Muslim views and had made threats against the local mosque. The SUV had an anti-Muslim message, comparing the Koran to Ebola, in its rear window at the time of the attack. This disturbing level of hate crimes, coupled with an increasingly prejudiced and vicious environment of anti-Muslim rhetoric, has led our nation to a crisis point.