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Religion and Hate Crimes Essay

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In 2008, the Uniform Crime Reporting program of the U.S. Department of Justice — Federal Bureau of Investigation reported that “13,690 law enforcement agencies submitted hate crime data to the UCR Program. Of these agencies, 2,145 reported 7,783 hate crime incidents involving 9,168 offenses and of the 7,780 single-bias incidents reported in 2008, 19.5 percent were motivated by religious bias” (1). The statistics of 2008 are alarming to look at because the numbers of hate crimes committed in that year are exceedingly high. These numbers are in the thousands and most of these crimes are coming from states like New York, New Jersey and California (Hate 1). The statistics only confirms that religion is a major contributor into hate crimes …show more content…

This movement wanted all different groups of people to live in peace and be free of any kind of discrimination. However, it's clear that the civil rights movement did not carry out its goal because many minorities like the Jewish people still suffer many hate crimes.
Christianity is the most prevalent religion in the United States. Many people belong to this religion. However, what happens when you don’t belong to Christianity? One religion that is not Christianity is the Jewish religion. This religion is one of the most ancient religions that is still very much provident today. However, this religion isn’t a respected religion even after the Holocaust and Jewish people continue to be the victims of many hate crimes. Donald Altschiller reinforces this speculation in his book, Hate Crimes: a Reference Handbook, when he states that, “anti-Semitism has had a pernicious history throughout the ages and around the world and Jewish hatred and violence has always been one of the highest of hate crimes. These attacks are “averaging 85 percent at Jewish Americans” (16). It’s not hard to see that hate crimes against the Jewish is remarkably strong. It is strong enough to lease out a rampage of violent attacks and murder. For example, Altshciller reports an incident of “September 1996 where sixty grave markers were killed at the Bikur Choli Sheveth cemetery in Connecticut” (16). The grave markers were Jewish and were killed while on the

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