SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 20: There is an almost 30 per cent increase in the number of anti-Muslim bias incidents from 2004 to 2005 with a substantial increase in California which has one of the largest Muslim population, the annual report by a leading civil rights group said on Wednesday.

A report of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) outlines 1,972 incidents and experiences of anti-Muslim violence, discrimination and harassment in 2005, the highest number of civil rights cases ever recorded in the group’s annual report.

According to the report, called “The Struggle for Equality,” that figure is a 29.6 per cent jump over the preceding year’s total of 1,522 cases.

Overall, nine states and the District of Columbia accounted for almost 79 per cent of all civil rights complaints to CAIR in 2005. They are: California (19 per cent), Illinois (13 per cent), New York (9 per cent), Texas (8 per cent), Virginia (7 per cent), Florida (6 per cent), District of Columbia (5 per cent), Maryland (4 per cent), Ohio (4 per cent) and New Jersey (4 per cent).

CAIR also received 153 reports of anti-Muslim hate crime complaints, an 8.6 per cent increase from the 141 complaints received in 2004. As in past years, CAIR said factors contributing to the sharp increase in reported incidents included the lingering impact of post-9/11 fears, increased awareness of civil rights issues in the Muslim community and a general increase in anti-Muslim rhetoric in American society.

“We believe the biggest factor contributing to anti-Muslim feeling and the resulting acts of bias is the growth in Islamophobic rhetoric that has flooded the Internet and talk radio in the post-9/11 era,” said CAIR Legal Director Arsalan Iftikhar.