Benefits October 6, 2006

25% of Anti-Muslim Civil Rights Complaints Occur in Workplace

October 6, 2006 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - The number of anti-Muslim civil rights complaints continued its steady increase in 2005, climbing by 29.6%, with one quarter of cases occurring in the workplace, according to a recent report.
Reported by

The Washington, DC-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) received 1,972 civil rights complaints in 2005, up from the 1,522 reported cases in 2004 and 1,019 cases in 2003, the group said in its report .

About 25% of the civil rights violations occurred in the workplace, with 501 cases, the report said. The most common (14.5%) type of alleged abuse was in the form of employment discrimination, followed by verbal harassment (6.9%) and denial of religious accommodation (15%).

Nineteen percent of civil rights violations occurred in government agencies, 8.8% in prisons, and 8.2% in schools.

The number of anti-Muslim hate crime complaints also went up in 2005 to 153, a 8.6% increase, up from the 141 complaints received in 2004 and 93 in 2003.

Seventy-nine percent of the complaints in 2005 were concentrated in ten states, with the highest concentration (19%) in California, followed by Illinois (13%), New York (9%), and Texas (8%).

«