David Skinner takes a closer look at CAIR’s new “hate crimes” report, which makes the absurd claim that “anti-Muslim hate crimes” are up more than 70% this year: Behind CAIR’s Hate Crimes Report.

It’s almost humorous what tiny offenses pass as worthy of complaint in the CAIR report. That a student at the University of Houston “saw flyers and posters with false and degrading statements about the Qur’an and the prophet Muhammad” is apparently a civil rights matter. That a College Republican at Roger Williams in Rhode Island wrote in a student publication that “a true Muslim is taught to slay infidels” is treated with similar gravity.

Several of the report’s examples of anti-Muslim rhetoric (the only prominent ones come from Dr. Laura and Paul Harvey, the latter of which was followed by an apology) hinge on whether or not Islam promotes killing. But this is even a subject of debate within Islam. Also, that the question should be taken up with some interest by outsiders is, again, neither a civil rights matter nor evidence of hatred or bias. The issue is merely relevant to why al Qaeda and other Islamofacist organizations are at war with the United States. And, to put it tamely, it does not speak well of CAIR (or its purported constituents) that the organization does its level-best to close off such discussions.

None of the press coverage on CAIR’s report gives readers a sense of its patchwork quality. Although undermining the USA Patriot Act is the most important item on CAIR’s agenda, the report dismisses the legislation in about four paragraphs giving a distorted picture of controversial Section 215. Nor do the authors note when their evidence contradicts their thesis of increasing bias and decreasing vigilance against bias: In the same section where its truncated discussion of the Patriot Act appears, the CAIR report discusses two cases of government bias in which the rights of Muslims were loudly and effectively defended.

In one, the right of a Philadelphia police officer to wear her hijab to work was successfully defended by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In the other case, a judge was forced to apologize and resign for suggesting a Muslim appearing in his court was a terrorist. The report’s appendix, too, contains another such story in which a Muslim county employee was allowed to keep his job even though his Friday prayer obligations kept him out of the office all afternoon. The situation was resolved; the employee doesn’t need to be in the office and, it seems, doesn’t need to make up the hours. “I’m really pleased with result,” the employee told a California paper. “They [the county] treated me with a lot of respect.”

NOWHERE does the report’s lack of rigorousness show more clearly than in the section titled “Sample Cases.” “On February 28th,” reads the very first item listed as a hate crime, “two unknown males assaulted a Muslim student at Georgia Tech in Atlanta at night. The attackers beat him for no apparent reason and did not attempt to rob him.” Which means there is “no apparent reason” to call it a hate crime. Under the same heading are listed several instances of minor vandalism, broken windows, graffiti, a defaced “Iraqi display case” at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Muslim Students Association.