Mourners hold a candlelight vigil at the Islamic Center of Southern California in Los Angeles on February 12, 2015 for the three Muslim students who were fatally shot in North Carolina. | Getty FBI: Hate crimes against Muslims in U.S. jump 67 percent in 2015

Hate crimes against Muslims in America soared 67 percent in 2015, according to a new FBI report that also reveals a nearly 7 percent increase in hate crimes overall.

The bureau’s Uniform Crime Report, which catalogs data about hate crimes, documented 257 anti-Muslim hate crimes — up from 154 in 2014 — and 5,850 total incidents reported to police last year, a 6.8 percent increase over the 5,479 incidents reported in 2014.


Nearly 57 percent of the reported incidents were motivated by race, ethnicity or ancestry. Fifty-three percent of such attacks targeted African-Americans, while 19 percent were anti-white.

More than 1,000 incidents were each reported based off religious bias and bias against sexual orientation. A majority of those religious cases — 53 percent — involved anti-Semitism, and 21 percent were anti-Muslim, a group of people President-elect Donald Trump alienated in December when the then-Republican presidential candidate called for “a total and complete shutdown” of Muslim immigration.

All but 19 of the 1,053 incidents regarding sexual orientation were anti-LGBT. An overwhelming 63 percent of cases were anti-gay (male), while 19 percent were motivated against the LGBT group at large and 13 percent specifically against lesbians.

Other hate crimes were based on disability, gender and gender identity.

Sixty-two percent of the reported incidents were crimes against persons rather than property. Top crimes include intimidation, simple assault and aggravated assault.

Seventy-three percent of the crimes against property fell into a category of destruction, damage and vandalism. The remaining most frequent crimes include larceny-theft, burglary and robbery.

Nearly 15,000 law enforcement agencies participated in the hate crime statistics program.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a non-profit that monitors domestic hate groups and other extremists, there were 892 active hate groups last year.

The list of groups was dominated by the Ku Klux Klan (190) and black separatists (180). SPLC defines the latter group as “organizations whose ideologies include tenets of racially based hatred,” noting their opposition to integration and interracial marriage.

There were also nearly 100 cases each of white nationalist (95), racist skinhead (95) and neo-Nazi (94) groups.

“Only organizations known to be active in 2015, whether that activity included marches, rallies, speeches, meetings, leafleting, publishing literature or criminal acts, among other activities, were counted in the listing,” SPLC said. “Entities that appear to exist only in cyberspace are not included because they are likely to be individual Web publishers who likely to falsely portray themselves as powerful, organized [g]roups.”