New Data On Religiously Motivated Hate Crimes In U.S.

The FBI has recently released its report on Hate Crime Statistics for 2004, collected under the 1990 Hate Crime Statistics Act. The report shows an increase in hate crimes. It says that 16.4% of the reported hate crimes were religiously motivated. Those broke down as follows: There were 1374 total incidents of religiously motivated hate crime. Of these, 954 were anti-Jewish, 57 were anti-Catholic, 38 were anti-Protestant, 156 were anti-Islamic, 128 were anti-other religion, 35 were anti-multiple religions or groups, and 6 were anti-Atheism/Agnosticism. The Anti-Defamation League today issued a press release welcoming the report and calling for increased efforts to address the problem of hate crimes.