Thaindian News

September 14, 2010 (Pen Men at Work): The anti Islam trend has been growing steadily in the US since the catastrophic event of 9/11 that shook the world. Threats in different forms have been plaguing the Muslims residing across the United States of America with objections to mosque building and even burning the holy Quran by a Florida pastor gaining support from a sizable chunk of the population. The anti Muslim bias seems to have entered the workplace forcefully now as well.

Mary Jo O’Neill who is an attorney and works at the ‘Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’ for the district of Phoenix agrees that there has been a huge increase in hatred against the Muslims. People have been very open about it and seem to have zero tolerance for the Muslim people. She says that she has been receiving a lot of discrimination complaints against the Muslim workers in the states of Wyoming, Utah, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico.

While she agrees that the mosque at Manhattan had been the flashpoint, she nevertheless believes that the sentiments have been there even before. Now the people are very open in conveying to the Muslims that they do not want to respect or tolerate their religion or practices anymore. They even make it a point to ridicule and call them names quite openly.

EEOC figures pertaining to bias against the Muslims show that they had escalated to 1490 last year where there had been only 697 cases reported in 2004. The official figures for the current year are yet to be published.

Lobna Luby Ismail, a partner with Connecting Cultures say that most people do not realize that the Muslims can also be Americans as most of them in this country happen to be. Her firm specializes in diversity training.