While I agree that Muslims shouldn't be targeted for abuse (physical or otherwise). I do have some issues with the way "hate crime" legislation is structured and enforced.
First off, the laws say one thing, but people enforcing them say another:
The FBI's hate crimes statistics for 1993, which similarly reported 20% of all hate crimes to be committed against white people, prompted Jill Tregor, assistant regional FBI director, to decry it as "an abuse of what the hate crime laws were intended to cover", stating that the white victims of these crimes were employing hate crime laws as a means to further penalize minorities.
Based on that statement, it's pretty clear that the whole purpose of the creation of hate crimes were to over-penalize whites when they commit crimes against minority groups. Basically what Jill is saying is, when white people abuse others, it's because white people are bad and should be punished more...when others abuse white people, white people are bad for wanting the same kinds of laws applied consistently.
Second, I don't like that they cover circumstances of choice the same way they cover circumstances of birth. Why should religion be an thought process for which an attack against someone else carries a heftier sentence. Why should a person attacking a Muslim get a harsher sentence than the Cleveland Indians fan who punched out the Cubs fan last year? Both were cases where the person wasn't like because of an ideology they held...one just happens to be where a person thinks a particular deity is better, where the other is where a person thinks a particular city/team is better. Why is one special?
Lastly, I don't like how much they've watered down the terms "extremism", "radicalism", and "terrorism". It's blatantly obvious that they've watered down the terms with the sole purpose of political correctness so they can pad the stats creatively to make it sound as if "every group does it at the same rate" to counter people who are upset at the fact that certain groups have higher concentrations of large-scale, violent outbursts...
They'll trot out these doctored up statistics where they can say "well, ya know, white power groups and Christian extremists have actually committed more acts of extremism since 9/11 than Muslims".
They conveniently leave out the fact that they're treating an instance of graffiti/vandalism the same as Pulse nightclub for the purposes of reporting.
Sorry, 2 instances of spray painting a swastika isn't "worse" than 1 mass shooting simply because "The number 2 > the number 1". However, that's the way they report these stats for the purposes of political correctness. Both acts are deplorable, both are not equally deplorable.
Again, to clarify, I'm not advocating (nor excusing) any sort of hateful acts against Muslims (even though I'll most likely be accused of that in the posts to follow)...however, once again (like I do in all of these threads), I ask...can we please be adults and just acknowledge that we know why people are a bit extra agitated about Islam (in comparison to other groups) instead of being intentionally naive and saying "gee, I just can't figure out why people are more critical of Islam than other groups...other groups do bad stuff too...hmmm...must be Islamaphobia"...we all know the answer to that question, let's not play dumb.
What people don't realize is that failure to at least acknowledge a problem just creates a more hostile environment where certain, less rational people are going to feel emboldened with the idea that "well, if nobody is going to do anything, I will!"
Progressives seem to have no problems acknowledging this as it pertains to the issue of racism and mistreatment by the police, and there are quite a few parallels. All of the arguments progressives make in defense of Islam are the exact same kinds of arguments the "Blue lives matter" people make when trying to defend the institution of law enforcement after a cop shoots an unarmed black kid. "Most of them would never do this", "you're broad-brushing based on a few bad apples", "you just have prejudice against XYZ", "the media is making it seem worse than what it actually is", etc...
And when an angry young black man lashes out on a police officer over it, progressives (and #BLM supporters) have no problem realizing that, while it was a wrong, foolish act, it was because it was pent up anger and frustration over society's failure to acknowledge a very real problem.
All I ask of people is why can't you use that kind of perceptive reasoning consistently?