Excerpt:
Like Newton's or Mendel's or Rothman's, an incontrovertible law seems to govern the reaction to acts of Islamic terrorism in the U.S. It runs something like this: If the perpetrators of terrorism are Muslims, the most pressing problem American authorities face is not Islamic terrorism; it's anti-Muslim rhetoric/crime. Thus, as the nation reeled from the deadliest act of Islamic terrorism on American soil since September 11, Loretta Lynch declared her "greatest fear" to be the "incredibly disturbing rise of anti-Muslim rhetoric" in the U.S., and promised that her Justice Department would "take action" (though how, precisely, is a matter of dispute).
But just how common are crimes against Muslims?
According to the FBI's annual Uniform Crime Report, there were 1,014 hate-crime incidents motivated by religious bias in 2014. Of those, 154 — 15.2 percent — were anti-Islamic, a slight uptick from 2013's 135 incidents (13.1 percent).