From a Cherry Hill restaurant where a burnt Quran was tossed through a window, to a prominent Muslim mayor turned away from a White House gathering, an organization advocating for the civil rights of Muslims in New Jersey says it fielded a record number of complaints last year.
The Garden State chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations documented 309 complaints of anti-Muslim bigotry in 2023, double the number it fielded the previous year, according to a new report released by group Tuesday.
That figure is most likely an undercount, said Dyaa Terpstra, the report’s principle author, because of hesitancy in Muslim communities over reporting hate crimes and acts of bigotry.
The increase is partly due to “capacity-building” by his group and more community awareness, he said, but New Jersey also saw a spike in hate crimes following the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas militants that reignited war with Israel.
“It’s directly caused by what’s going on with Israel’s genocide and war on Gaza,” he said in a telephone interview. “Why? Because it’s not just something happening over there.”
More than half the incidents last year happened between October and December.
The CAIR report follows a survey released earlier this month by the Anti-Defamation League which similarly found a spike in antisemitic incidents last year.
The report’s findings are also similar to preliminary figures released last month by the state Attorney General’s Office, which compiles its own collection of hate crime and bias incident data using different criteria and found spikes across several religious and ethnic groups.
CAIR flagged a range of incidents across the state, some of which grabbed headlines — like when Prospect Park Mayor Mohamed T. Khairullah was turned away from a Eid al-Fitr celebration at the White House by Secret Service — while others happened behind closed doors in schools, homes and businesses.
In one case, a six-year-old student was reported by their art teacher to administrators under the school’s “harassment, intimidation and bullying” policy for drawing a picture of the Palestinian flag.
In another, a burnt Quran was thrown through a window at a Cherry Hill restaurant.
The report also details instances of anti-Muslim bullying in schools and several interactions between young Muslim men and the FBI.
One Rutgers University student was reported to the FBI for posting a Quran verse on social media, according to the report. The student approached CAIR after meeting with an FBI agent and becoming suspicious when the agent told him not to speak to his parents about their conversation, the report claimed.
Terpstra said his group has been approached numerous times this year alone by young Muslims who were reported to the FBI as “a potential terrorist” for comments or social media posts critical of the U.S. or Israel.
“Then they pry and see what they can get, when there’s no even possible crime created from that information,” he said. He added that New Jersey Muslims continue to face threats because of bias among “elected officials, politicians, the media, employers — even schools.”
FBI officials do not generally comment on their investigations and could not immediately be reached.
Selaedin Maksut, CAIR-NJ’s executive director, said there were silver linings to the report’s grim data, including better awareness among the Muslim community of their civil rights.
“Despite the staggering numbers before us, Muslims remain undeterred and unafraid,” he said in a statement accompanying the report. “We see Muslim students and employees exercising their right to free speech even more unabashedly now, whether that’s in their workplace, at school, or on their college campuses.
“Muslims will continue to travel even if they are subject to extra security screenings. Muslim women will continue to wear their hijabs even if they are harassed for it.”
The group recently won a victory in court when the Supreme Court declined to toss CAIR’s challenge to the federal “no fly” list of potential terrorist threats, which critics have long argued discriminates against Muslims.
CAIR represents Khairullah, the Prospect Park mayor, in a separate lawsuit alleging he was barred from the White House celebration because of his wrongful placement on the watch list. That case is still pending.
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S.P. Sullivan may be reached at ssullivan@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on X.
