WASHINGTON (IPS/GIN) - Complaints of discrimination, harassment and violence against Muslims jumped over 30 percent in 2005 from the previous year, according to a report released Sept. 18 by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim organization.

A total of 1,972 such incidents were reported in 2005. That was the highest number since CAIR began reporting anti-Muslim incidents in 1995, the year that the bombing by right-wing extremists of the federal government building in Oklahoma City, blamed initially by the mass media on Arab radicals, set off a rash of anti-Muslim attacks.

CAIR said it had also received 153 reports of anti-Muslim hate crimes, an increase of nearly 10 percent over 2004, and more than 50 percent over the 93 reports received in 2003.

“[I]t is clear that there remains a growing atmosphere of fear and hostility toward American Muslims, Arab-Americans and South Asians,” this year’s report concluded, noting that recent public opinion surveys have likewise shown a rise in anti-Muslim sentiment among the general public here.

The yearly number of complaints of civil rights-related incidents—that is, discrimination, harassment and violence that did not rise to the level of hate crimes—tripled between the April 1995 Oklahoma bombing and mid-1997 from 80 to 240. It then climbed gradually up to 366 over the following four years before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Since then, however, the number of reported incidents has risen sharply—from 602 in 2002; to 1,019 in 2003; to 1,522 in 2004; to just under 2,000 last year, according to the report, which suggested that increased awareness of civil rights issues within the U.S. Muslim community, as well as a rise in anti-Muslim sentiment as reflected in the polls, may have combined to push the totals ever higher.

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