WASHINGTON, 17 July 2003 — A new report released Tuesday shows a 61 percent increase on Muslim American harassment and discrimination since a year prior to Sept. 11, 2001.

According to the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR, in 2002 Muslims in the US reported 602 complaints of discrimination, representing a 15 percent increase over last year.

“More than any other year, the daily experiences of Muslims in schools, workplaces, public areas, airports, and in encounters with the courts, police and other government agencies included incidents in which they were profiled and singled out because of actual or perceived religious and ethnic identity. Anti-Muslim sentiment related to the Sept. 11attacks were cited in many reports,” notes CAIR. “Never before has an international terrorist act had such a long-lasting impact on Muslim life in the United States.”

CAIR says high incidence of mistreatment at the hand of federal government personnel continued to be reported. It said FBI agents and other local law enforcement authorities have sometimes responded to hearsay reports, and conducted questionable raids and interrogations.

CAIR’s report says queries by some FBI agents about mosque membership lists and media reports about a proposed FBI counting of mosques has raised widespread apprehension among community members who believed they were being scrutinized based on their religious association. It added that other “profiling-based interrogations and searches” continued throughout the year.

Critics charge the government’s actions as violating the First and Fourth Amendments of the US Constitution, and say singling out Muslims is increasing in all sectors.

Evangelical leaders and neoconservative rhetoric has also attributed to the rise of discrimination against Muslims, CAIR said. A segment of their report documents examples of their “divisive language.”

Recently, national Islamic groups have expressed alarm about reports by American Muslims who have been confronted by extra demands by banks and credit card companies for additional information, or discovering their bank accounts have been closed, without notice. They have also been asked to provide tax and banking records, residency documentation and proof of identity, and some immigrants in the Washington area say they have been “distressed” at questioning at banks.

Business experts and US officials deny that new anti-terrorism regulations discriminate against Muslims or Arab Americans, but they acknowledge that some have, or could, face additional investigation.

Psychologists warn of the effects this will have on the psyches of Muslims and non-Muslims: “I think we should abolish the world ‘they.’ We have a very dualistic tendency to divide the world in terms of ‘us vs. them.’ The fact that the terrorists were Muslims means we tended to homogenize everybody,” said Diane Perlman, a clinical psychologist and contributor to “The Psychology of Terrorism.”

“We have to deal with both correcting facts and exposing lies and the psychological manipulation of the public and exaggeration of threats,” said Perlman.