FBI: Jews Subject to 54 Percent of Religiously Motivated Hate Crimes in 2016, Despite Being Just Two Percent of U.S. Population
Today, the FBI released its annual report on hate crimes for the previous calendar year. As has been the case since the bureau began collecting these figures in 1992, Jews were again found to be the chief target of religiously-motivated hate crimes. Despite constituting just two percent of the American population, Jews were subject to 54.4 percent of such attacks.
At the same time, as the Anti-Defamation League noted, “the greatest increase in religious-based crimes was those against Muslims; they increased 19 percent from 2015 to 2016.” In total, Muslims were the victims of 24.5 percent of religiously-motivated crimes, the next highest total after Jews, though this figure does not take into account the 1.6 percent of anti-Arab crimes which may also have been Islamophobic in nature.