Discrimination and attacks against American Muslims and Arabs rose by 7.4 per cent in 2024 due to heightened Islamophobia caused by US ally Israel’s war on Gaza and the resulting college campus protests, a Muslim advocacy group has said, Reuters reports.

The Council on American Islamic Relations (Cair) said it recorded the highest number of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab complaints — 8,658 — in 2024 since it began publishing data in 1996.

Most complaints were in the categories of employment discrimination (15.4pc), immigration and asylum (14.8pc), education discrimination (9.8pc) and hate crimes (7.5pc), according to the Cair report.

The Cair report also details police and university crackdowns on pro-Palestinian protests and encampments on college campuses.

“For the second year in a row, the US-backed Gaza genocide drove a wave of Islamophobia in the United States,” Cair said. Israel denies genocide and war crimes accusations.