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As I stated before, I''m travelling this week and have limited access to the internet - sometimes reading and replying on the blackberry.

I did look at the stats underlying the Telegraph article and that only covered 3 months in 2006 in a few UK districts (not a national survey, nor for a whole year). Even then it showed that there were more attacks on Muslims (well, incidents - there were far fewer actual assaults on both sides)

Roadster - I have no problem believing that anti-semitism is rising - attacks against the 'other' usually does when populations feel threatened and certainly go up in hard times. This affects immigrants and others too.

I've also quoted the Muslim MP above - anti-semitism is to be condmened and there is no excuse for it. My objection is when condemnation of Israeli actions is labelled as anti-semitism.

It appears that eh is, after all, incapable of posting the numbers of incidents of anti-semitism and islamophobia (for the same periods and areas) here. Fair enough, I'll deal with this next week and look up the numbers for the dear boy. As I said, perhaps this time the stats will bear out his beliefs that more Jews are attacked than Muslims.

Cheers,
Shafique

The stats regarding France are on a pdf document. That's why I said you'll need to click on the link and scroll down to the page to verify what the document says.

Until then, can you confirm the copy/paste that in the US, Jews are the targets of the most faith based attacks than any other group (combined), followed by Christians?

Yes, I've already said I will extract the numbers from your links and present them here as I requested you do.

Perhaps this time you may be proved right - let's see what the stats say. Can only do this at the weekend though. So some patience young man.

Cheers
Shafique

There were 1,606 hate crime offenses motivated by religious bias in 2008. A breakdown of these offenses shows:

* 65.7 percent were anti-Jewish.
* 13.2 percent were anti-other religion.
* 7.7 percent were anti-Islamic.
* 4.7 percent were anti-Catholic.
* 4.2 percent were anti-multiple religions, group.
* 3.7 percent were anti-Protestant.
* 0.9 percent were anti-Atheism/Agnosticism/etc

Do you agree that, in the US, Jews are Christians are bigger victims than Muslims?

To be fair though you need to divide the crimes by the numbers of faith people.

To be fair, your argument is not with me, but with shafique:

Just to make the point that we need to look at the statistics carefully - the Telegraph report is actually making conclusions based on 3 months of data - from July to September 2006.

Over that period, a total of 109 faith based attacks took place against Muslims in the the areas picked by the newspaper. In the same period and in the same areas, there were 107 faith based attacks against Jews.

i.e. fewer attacks.

Also, it says that these stats don't record all attacks (hundreds are missing, it says) and does not only include violent physical attacks, but any verbal or other abuse.

So - even in this evidence, more Muslims were attacked than Jews. It is a statistical fallacy (and absurd notion) to argue that if there are more Muslims there will be proportionately more attacks against them - it is the anti-semites and Islamophobes who are being counted, so the numbers of attacks is what counts when assessing the relative severity of anti-semitism vs Islamophobia. Just imagine if there was only one Jewish person in an area (one of the areas listed had a population of zero Jews - see the table in the article) - if there were no attacks against him/her - could we conclude that there is no antisemitism at all, and more to the point, would we conclude that there is 100% anti-semitism if that one person was attacked?

Therefore, we need to look at numbers of attacks. (I don't blame the police, they didn't make the allegations - it was the journalist at the Telegraph spinning the story - and they apparently don't understand how ratios/stats work).

The fact is that in those 3 months, more Muslims were attacked than Jews.

Cheers,
Shafique

Shafique was the one who argued that population sizes of Jews and Muslims is irrelevant when considering the number of attacks each group of people recieved - I was the one to point out that the number of Jews in Europe is much less than the number of Muslims.

But go ahead, divide out the faith based attacks against US Jews and US Muslims. I believe their populations are around the same - so you'll still see that US Jews are bigger victims than US Muslims are.

If you divide it by population of faith then there is no argument.

Been there, done that, have the t-shirt:

Jewish people are four times more likely to be attacked because of their religion than Muslims, according to figures compiled by the police.

One in 400 Jews compared to one in 1,700 Muslims are likely to be victims of "faith hate" attacks every year. The figure is based on data collected over three months in police areas accounting for half the Muslim and Jewish populations of England and Wales. The crimes range from assault and verbal abuse to criminal damage at places of worship.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... slims.html

(Oh, and according to the last post, there is an argument if you divide the faith-based attacks by the number of adherents to that faith)

???

well as they say on discovery "myth - busted"!

Actually I'm amazed as I didn't think antisemitism was that bad in the UK, though guess its polarised news reporting making out the muslims are massive victims to hate (BNP/EDL etc)

Hey, I'm actually half hoping that eh is correct on this point - I've said above, perhaps the stats will bear out his beliefs here.

Any increase in actual anti-semitism is indeed to be condemned, and any real increase should indeed be highlighted - the stats should show this, one way or other.

I only object to the mis-use of labelling criticism of Israel as incidents of 'anti-semitism'.

What the Telegraph survey showed was that over 3 months in 2006, there were more 'incidents' against Muslims than 'incidents' against Jews - and that there were no actual prosecutions of violent attacks (and its not clear whether the physical attacks were more on Muslims rather than Jews).

As for ratios - that will just show the proportions of each community that can expect to face racial abuse. My experience of the UK is that racial abuse against immigrants is a bigger problem than anti-semitism (but that is just my experience of what life is like in East London vs North London - having lived in both areas). The Daily Telegraph conclusion is basically sloppy reporting - you can't conclude from the limited stats that Jews are four times as likely to face abuse because of their religion. That implies that if the numbers of Jews doubled, the numbers of abuses would double. But by the own stats - over 90% of Jews aren't subject to anti-semitic attacks - so there is no shortage of opportunity for anti-semites to abuse. The limiting factor is not likely to be the numbers of Jews available to abuse, but the number of anti-semites.

Think about it - if Jewish population doubles, will there be double the number of anti-semites, or the same number doing double the attacks? Why would they only do two attacks instead of one if there are 200 instead of 100 jews to attack? (Sorry, the actuary in me is coming out )

But, as promised, let's look at the statistics and include the populations to keep eh happy - we just want to test the premise that anti-semitism is a bigger problem. I can't say I can conclude that from the UK stats in the daily telegraph article - perhaps the other sources above will provide more convincing evidence..? Let's see.

Cheers,
Shafique

Ok, as promised, I'll go through each set of statistics and extract numbers of anti-semitic attacks and comparable Islamphobic attacks in the same place and period - to show whether anti-semitisim is on the rise and more of a problem than Islamophobia.

Let's start at the beginning then:

event horizon wrote:A handy list of anti-Semitic attacks in France for the first four and half months of 2002:

http://www.kintera.org/atf/cf/%7BDFD2AA ... ttacks.pdf

Ok - lists attacks in 2002 as mentioned. Nothing on the comparable Islamophobic attacks - so either we can't use this, or eh can did up the latter?

event horizon wrote:And from this report, which is heavily criticized for its 'overall' conclusions here: http://www.parapundit.com/archives/002026.html ,
...
For the report itself: http://www.infopartisan.net/document/an ... studie.pdf

Yes, interesting report. Does give a country by country breakdown of incidents up to 2002. The UK one is interesting, it cites that there were indeed 51 attacks on Jews in 2002.

However, I couldn't see a comparison with Islamophobic attacks though. Ok... moving on then..

I couldn't immediately see the reference (on pg 22?) which said in France the Jews bear the brunt of the attacks. It must be late... but hopefully this will come out in the other statistics (and hopefully something more recent than 2002)

....

event horizon wrote:According to page 63 of a study on anti-Semitic attacks, 146 out of a total of 216 recorded racist attacks were carried out against French Jews for the year of 2000.

http://www.infopartisan.net/document/an ... studie.pdf

In France, just like the United States, there are more attacks against Jews than against Muslims.

Ok, so this is from the same 2002 report.

But, fair is fair - this is statistical evidence and it does show that the French have more recorded crimes against Jews than recorded crimes against Muslims (because of their religion).

(I did initially want to check out whether there were only 216 incidents in France - but hey, why quibble over numbers - I asked for stats, you provided them)

Ah, ok - we have some from 2008 I see - perhaps now we'll get some direct comparisons...

event horizon wrote:Here are the numbers for faith based attacks in the US:

There were 1,606 hate crime offenses motivated by religious bias in 2008. A breakdown of these offenses shows:

* 65.7 percent were anti-Jewish.
* 13.2 percent were anti-other religion.
* 7.7 percent were anti-Islamic.
* 4.7 percent were anti-Catholic.
* 4.2 percent were anti-multiple religions, group.
* 3.7 percent were anti-Protestant.
* 0.9 percent were anti-Atheism/Agnosticism/etc

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2008/incidents.html

Interesting to note that there were more attacks against Christians in the US than attacks against Muslims - so, Christians are even bigger victims than our victim-merchants.

Yes, can't argue with that.

See - the boy comes through after all. The FBI statistics do show indeed that in the US the yanks do commit more crimes against Jews (and Christians) than against Muslims.

So perhaps there is a problem over there in the States. We could even calculate some ratios

Any evidence from Europe (other than France) that this pattern is repeated? Do we expect we have 7 times fewer attacks on Muslims in Europe than on Jews?

But fair is fair, it appears that the Americans do hate the Jews more than they hate the Muslims - according to FBI stats. It shows that I shouldn't be so quick to judgement based on media reports - perhaps the US doesn't actually have as many people who share the Islamophobia of some of our posters as popular opinion would have it.

Thanks for providing the stats eh - fascinating to see that in the States it appears that a Muslim should feel safer than a Jew. I'm happy to join you in campaigning for greater safety for Jews in America - as this perfectly complements my stance against injustices committed against other groups in other parts of the world.

Cheers,
Shafique

Too long, didn't read.

Glad you acknowledge that the facts don't support your quaint belief.

I think also Shaf alot of muslims need to wake up and not automatically think the west is as pro-isreal / jewish as they believe.

Roadtester wrote:I think also Shaf alot of muslims need to wake up and not automatically think the west is as pro-isreal / jewish as they believe.

Yes, I agree.

In fact, a few name-changes ago eh-oh started a thread on how British Muslims were taking out ads in Pakistan to point out that the West isn't as Islamophobic as the Mullahs portray it to be. Eh argued that the media in the west had it all wrong when it pointed out that Islam's teachings were actually peaceful (and IIRC, it was an early outing of his 'the Quran preaches war' quaint belief). I argued that the Brit Muslims were perfectly right - and should indeed be telling it as it is. (It was a bizare thread, as I was agreeing with what eh had initially posted - but he ended up arguing with me because I agreed the media was portraying Islam correctly)

As I said above once I had seen the FBI stats, on this issue the stats speak for themselves - in the USA and France there are far more reported crimes against Jews than there are against other religious groups. Who would have thunk it - the yanks hate the Jews more than they hate the Muslims! I wouldn't have reached that conclusion without the stats being presented - and now I'm all the wiser.

Cheers,
Shafique