Almost every religious group in American complains they suffer persecution. And they do. But two things jump out of the FBI’s recently released report on hate crimes.
First, only 18% were “motivated by religious bias” compared to 50.% by race.
Second, there were twice as many hate crimes based on sexual orientation (16.6%) as there were based on Christianity.
Perhaps the biggest surprise to me: anti-Semitic crimes far outnumbered crimes against all other faiths combined. Of the 1,477 offenses reported by law enforcement, the breakdown was:

  • 68.4 percent were anti-Jewish.
  • 9.5 percent were anti-other religion.
  • 9.0 percent were anti-Islamic.
  • 4.4 percent were anti-Catholic.
  • 4.3 percent were anti-multiple religions, group.
  • 4.0 percent were anti-Protestant.
  • 0.4 percent were anti-Atheism/Agnosticism/etc
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