Executive Summary

CAIR research staff identify three standout trends in this report’s findings:

1. CAIR’s civil rights reports have told the story of American Muslims being targeted due to their faith since its inception in the wake of 1995’s Oklahoma City bombing. In 2024 we find a different theme: Muslims—along with Palestinians, Arabs, Jews, African Americans, Asian Americans and others—were targeted due to their anti-genocide and anti-apartheid viewpoints.

2. For the first time employment, discrimination was the top type of incident reported to CAIR. For the second year in a row, the Biden-backed Gaza genocide drove a wave of Islamophobia in the United States. Many corporate promises to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in 2020 went apparently unfulfilled as employers punished or smeared staff, particularly minorities, who advocated against Israel’s military occupation, apartheid, and genocide of Palestinians. Adopting a similar posture, many university administrators favored state force and institutional discipline over such hard conversations.

3. Law enforcement encounters climbed from 295 total in 2023 to 506 in 2024. This is a 71.5 percent increase. This spike coincided with the student anti-genocide encampments.

CAIR offices received 8,658 incoming complaints nationwide in 2024. This marks the highest number of complaints CAIR has recorded since our first civil rights report was published in 1996. Employment discrimination complaints comprised 15.4 percent of total complaints received in 2024. This also marks the first time employment discrimination has been the highest-reported category to CAIR offices.

Previously, the highest-recorded number of complaints occurred in 2023. The number of complaints received in 2024 marks a 7.4% increase from the 8,061 complaints reported in 2023.

CAIR identified 40 incidents explicitly targeting spaces designated for Islamic worship in 2024.

Behind these numbers are human tragedies. In Texas, Elizabeth Wolf was indicted “on attempted capital murder and causing bodily injury to a child,”² after allegedly attempting to drown two Muslim children. A hate crime enhancement added to Wolf’s indictment notes that she “targeted the children because they were ‘Muslims or persons of Middle Eastern descent.’” Cuffed and taken away by a police officer, Wolf reportedly shouted, “Tell [the mother] I will kill her, and I will kill her whole family.”

In Illinois, Alexandra Szustakiewicz reportedly attacked a man and his pregnant wife at a Panera Bread in Downers Grove over a Palestine hoodie worn by one of her alleged victims.³ Szustakiewicz was arrested and charged with two hate crime counts and disorderly conduct.⁴ In August, a Florida man was sentenced for attacking a Muslim female U.S. Postal Service worker. In 2023, Kenneth Pinkney had approached the victim—who was in her Postal Service uniform and operating a marked truck—and tore off her hijab (Islamic head scarf), slapped, and punched her in the face, causing her to bleed from her mouth and left scratches on her face.

The wave of Islamophobic bias that dominates this report impacted the status of Muslim civil rights in many ways in 2024, several of which are included in this report’s special sections:

1. University administrators used state force, university discipline, and policies restricting expressive activity to repress anti-genocide viewpoints. CAIR launched its Unhostile Campus Campaign to address the hostile climate in many places in higher education.

2. Anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian congressional investigations were initiated by House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) and House Education and Workforce Committee Chair Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.)

3. Legislation commonly referred to as the “Nonprofit Killer Bill” advanced in Congress. It expected to be reintroduced and advanced to President Trump in 2025. The legislation would allow the Secretary of the Treasury to revoke the nonprofit tax status of religious and advocacy organizations without justification, charges, or due process if it is enacted into law. The legislation was meant to target charities and nonprofit organizations who were voicing opposition to Israel’s policies of occupation, apartheid, and genocide. It could be easily weaponized to target any nonprofit organization that any President finds objectionable.

4. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio) used alarming tactics to justify the continuation of the backdoor search loophole in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s section 702.⁵ Chairman Turner and Democrat Jim Himes (D-Conn.) were advocating for legislation that would increase warrantless surveillance, targeting pro-Palestinian advocates, immigrants, and their families.

5. We noted above that employment discrimination was the highest reported category CAIR received in 2024. CAIR is preparing a stand-alone report on this subject.

This report’s special sections also include some signs of progress. The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 in favor of CAIR’s arguments against the federal No Fly List. Also, attorneys representing people impacted by President Trump’s 2017 Muslim Ban secured a major agreement creating a path forward for nearly 25,000 impacted people.⁶ Finally, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) prohibited the sale of personal data from Muslim app users for potential use in warrantless surveillance. In a statement, the FTC said that Data broker X-Mode Social and its successor Outlogic will be prohibited from sharing or selling any sensitive location data to settle allegations that the company sold precise location data that could be used to track people’s visits to sensitive locations such as medical and reproductive health clinics, places of religious worship, and domestic abuse shelters.

Based on these and other developments, CAIR makes several recommendations in this report:

1. Public officials at all levels of government, corporate leaders, and those speaking on behalf of places of education, must respect free speech on Palestine and the value of human life. If they choose to comment on international affairs such as events in Israel and Palestine, then equal weight and attention should be given to Palestinian suffering. If they choose to comment on issues relating to bias domestically, then the very well-documented surge in anti-Muslim bigotry and racism must be included in their concerns.

2. The Trump administration must suspend the FBI’s dissemination of their watchlist, which leaked copies show to be “almost entirely lists of Arabic and Muslim names.”

3. The U.S. Government must tie police funding to the submission of hate crimes data.

4. Mosques and other visibly Muslim institutions should consider taking advantage of security grants.
5. Banks must end the wrongful targeting of American Muslim, Arab, and Persian families.