The FBI released its 2006 hate crime statistics today, which, yet again, demonstrate that despite all the agitation by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to gin up cases of widespread "Islamophobia," the facts just do not fit CAIR's agenda.

According to the FBI, in 2006, there were 2,640 incidents of hate crimes against African-Americans, 967 incidents of anti-Jewish hate crimes, 890 anti-white hate crime incidents, 1,195 hate crime incidents based on sexual orientation, 576 anti-Hispanic hate crime incidents, and 181 hate crime incidents against Asians or Pacific Islanders. Anti-Muslim hate crime incidents numbered at only 156.

While crimes directed at any individual on the basis of race, religion or nationality are deplorable, the FBI's statistics give lie to CAIR's repeated claims that "Islamophobia" is the new anti-Semitism, that the current environment for American Muslims is somehow comparable to the civil rights struggles for African-Americans, and that American Muslims are being singled out for discrimination in a post-9/11 frenzy.

But despite the facts, CAIR's trumpeting of "Islamophobia," is unsurprising, and CAIR's Chairman Parvez Ahmed's has an op-ed out decrying "Islamophobic rhetoric" in the election season. But CAIR has no credibility on this issue, as this is the very same organization that included the arrest of terrorists such as top Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzook and the treatment of infamous Egyptian "Blind Sheikh" Omar Abdul Rahman, at the hands of the U.S. justice system in its 1996 report on "hate crimes" titled, "The Price of Ignorance."

While some government agencies and members of the media continue to treat CAIR as the representative to the Muslim community, actual statistics, and CAIR's own cynical history of labeling hardened terrorists as the victims of "hate crimes" should serve as a reminder that government officials and journalists should keep CAIR at arm's length.