Lies, Damned Lies, and Gateway Pundit's use of statistics
November 11, 2009 5:31 pm ET by Jamison Foser
The right-wing blog Gateway Pundit says Christians are the target of more hate crimes in the U.S. than Muslims:
In the real world... Hate crimes against Muslims have steadily declined since 2001. Today there are more reported hate crimes against Christians in the United States than Muslims.
That's a reference to the fact that there were 115 reported hate crime incidents against Muslims in 2007, according to the FBI, and 118 against Christians.
Now, this would be a good time to keep in mind that 78 percent of American adults are Christian, and 0.6 percent are Muslim. In other words, there are about 130 times as many Christians in the US as there are Muslims. And yet there were essentially the same number of reported hate crimes against Muslims as against Christians in 2007.
That sure paints a different picture than Gateway Pundit's statement that "there are more reported hate crimes against Christians in the United States than Muslims," doesn't it?
In an effort to downplay hate crimes against Muslims, Gateway Pundit has accidentally provided a reminder of just how disproportionately Muslims are the victims of such crimes. Heckuva job, GP.
If we equalize populations, we're looking at about 15,000 hate crimes against muslims vs 118 against Christians.
Most blacks and hispanics who've been the victims of hate crimes are Christians and most gays who've been the victim of hate crimes are Christians.
But I don't think that's what this low life meant.
To restate: A given Muslim is more than 125 times as likely to be a victim of a hate crime than a given Christian.
I would guess many of the anti-Jew crimes are committed by self-described Christian Nazi types. I'd like some more info on the anti-Christian hate crimes. Do these include failure to observe Operation Rescue barricades? Hmmm, I wonder.
At least one commenter was able to sum up the teachings of Jesus in a nutshell;
The simplest way for Christians and Jews to combat hate crimes is to violently and savagely attack and kill all enemies and perceived enemies.
Amen.
Or history.. or geography.. or well anything really.
Drudge would be proud of the spin job by mmfa...they act more and more like him everyday.
115 crimes against Muslims in 2007...once every 3 days in the entire nation.
C'mon Foser...you're better than this kind of silly reporting.
Will your scorn reach out to the folks into christian victimization.
~
Give us data!