Last week the Santa Clara-based Council on American-Islamic Relations of the San Francisco Bay Area (CAIR-SFBA) published its annual report on the state of Muslim civil rights in the Bay Area.
“This report will help community members better understand the work of the CAIR-SFBA civil rights department,” said CAIR’s Northern California Civil Rights Coordinator Rachel Roberts in a Nov.12 press release.
The organization reports that in 2011 it received ten percent more civil rights complaints than it did the previous year – something the organization says might simply reflect increased reporting. Of the 246 civil rights complaints the civil rights group analyzed, law enforcement questioning and surveillance topped the list (24%), followed by harassment (21%), and workplace discrimination (18%).
CAIR, now America’s largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization, was founded after the 1995 attack on the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, when many commentators initially and wrongly assumed Muslims were the likely perpetrators of the bombing.
For more information, visit ca.cair.com/sfba.