Speaking of professional victims, the Council on American-Islamic Relations is once again claiming that “anti-Muslim hate crimes” are increasing drastically. (Hat tip: lawhawk.)

May 11, 2005 — Reported bias crimes and civil-rights violations committed against Muslims in the United States during 2004 soared to its highest level since the period immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, a report says.

The report, by the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, blames lingering animosity toward Muslims and Arab-Americans and a growing use of anti-Muslim rhetoric by some national political, religious and media figures.

“We believe the disturbing rise in anti-Muslim hate crimes and in the total number of civil-rights cases … can be attributed at least in part to rising Islamophobic rhetoric in American society,” said Arsalan Iftikhar, the council’s legal director.

“Our nation’s political and religious leaders can help prevent anti-Muslim bias and discrimination by speaking more forcefully in favor of interfaith tolerance and religious pluralism.”

Shortly after September 11, CAIR began inviting visitors to their web site to use a special form that made it very easy to report “hate crimes,” and since then they’ve been using every trick in the professional victim’s book to try to create the impression that a massive wave of anti-Muslim sentiment is sweeping the nation. If they get the country to believe that much, the next step would presumably be the kind of thoughtcrime laws now being used by the Islamic Council of Victoria against an Australian pastor.

Trouble is, those pesky old “fact” things keep getting in the way.

The most recent FBI report on hate crimes, issued in November and covering 2003, found that anti-Islamic crimes remained at the about same level — 149 — as the year before.

The council counted 1,522 incidents in which Muslims reported their civil rights had been violated, an increase of 49 percent over 2003.

Note the big increase in reports, compared to no increase in actual crimes.