After a massive spike in 2001, hate crimes against Muslims in the United States began a slow descent that reversed itself in 2010, rising 50 percent to 160 reported crimes. That rise occurred in tandem with a rise in hostility to planned mosques across the country, particularly the Park51 Islamic community center in New York City. The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Mark Potok reported today that the FBI’s latest statistics show anti-Muslim crimes in 2011 dipped only slightly from that recent peak:

Hate crimes against perceived Muslims, which jumped up 50% in 2010 largely as a result of anti-Muslim propagandizing, remained at relatively high levels last year, according to 2011 hate crime statistics released today by the FBI.

The bureau reported that there were 157 reported anti-Muslim hate crimes in 2011, down slightly from the 160 recorded in 2010. The 2011 crimes occurred during a period when Islam-bashing propaganda, which initially took off in 2010, continued apace.

Rhetoric from conservatives aimed at inspiring fear about Muslims in the U.S. and sharia law accompanied last year’s high numbers, which a shooting at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin by a white supremacist. Sikhs follow a separate faith from Muslims, but the two are often conflated and hate crimes against both groups have risen in tandem in the past. Just last week, vandals left a slain pig in front of a mosque near Houston, TX. “I think it borders being a hate crime at least from our prospective,” said Council on American-Islamic Relations’s Mustafaa Carroll, referring to the fact that Muslims do not eat pork and consider pigs an unclean animal.

The FBI’s hate crime statistics are also better at revealing the direction and severity of trends rather than actual numbers, which they tend to vastly understate. A report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2005 determined that the actual amount of hate crimes in the country range from 19 to 31 times higher than the FBI’s numbers. As Potok put it: “Some 56% of hate crimes are never reported to police and more than half of those that are are mischaracterized as non-hate crimes. Nevertheless, the FBI statistics can be used to get a sense of general trends.”

The U.S. government has designated Jabhat al-Nusra — a rebel group operating within Syria — as a Global Terrorist organization, in what is seen as an attempt to hinder its rapid growth on the battlefield in Syria.

The designation — first confirmed in a note published in the Federal Register on Monday — will officially be announced tomorrow. Specifically, Jabhat al-Nusra is being labeled by the government as an alias of al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), the Sunni Muslim group that caused the death of thousands in Iraq after the U.S.-led 2003 invasion.

Jahbat al-Nusra isn’t the only hardline Islamist organization fighting in Syria, but it is both one of the deadliest and the only one with the official support of al Qaeda behind it. Aaron Zelin, a researcher at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, has noted that Jabhat al-Nusra has taken credit for over 500 attacks within Syria since its formation in January. “Unique among rebel groups operating in Syria, it has also earned the legitimacy of top global jihadist ideologues, who have called for grassroots supporters across the world to help fund or join up with the group,” Zelin wrote in Foreign Policy.

The decision to officially label Jahbat al-Nusra as a terrorist group comes just days ahead of talks among the “Friends of Syria” group in Morocco this week. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be leading the U.S. delegation, which is expected to announce its recognition of the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people. France, Turkey and other states have already labeled the National Coalition as such.

By officially deeming Jabhat al-Nusra a terrorist group, the State Department is likely seeking to halt its influence in a rapidly shifting situation in Syria. The move may be coming too late, as the group has already won over many with its fighting ability and funding stream from Gulf states, the New York Times reported on Sunday:

On Friday, demonstrators in several Syrian cities raised banners with slogans like, “No to American intervention, for we are all Jebhat al-Nusra,” referring to the group’s full name, Ansar al-Jebhat al-Nusra li-Ahl al-Sham, or Supporters of the Front for Victory of the People of Syria. One rebel battalion, the Ahrar, or Free Men, asked on its Facebook page why the United States did not blacklist Mr. Assad’s “terrorist” militias.

Another jihadist faction, the Sahaba Army in the Levant, even congratulated the group on the “great honor” of being deemed terrorists by the United States.

Jahbat al-Nusra was notably missing from a meeting in Turkey to elect a new unified command for the Free Syrian Army (FSA). The forces of both the FSA and al-Nusra have become a regular presence in the formerly calm capital, Damascus, leading many to wonder if the fall of President Bashar al-Assad is near. Assad has begun mobilizing the components of his chemical weapons arsenal in recent weeks, prompting concern from the United States and others that he will utilize them either blatantly or by placing the blame for their release upon rebels.

Fox News is again trying to drum up “controversy” around the Park51 Islamic community center in Manhattan. On Sunday, Fox Nation re-published a New York Post article claiming that “community programs” no longer exist at Park51, just Muslims praying. From there, Fox and Friends discussed the latest “development” on Park51. “It’s all pray and no play,” host Gretchen Carlson said and complained that the center isn’t hosting community programs and is instead attracting Muslims for prayer. Noted Islamophobe Donald Trump cited the oft-repeated far-right claim that Muslims built the community center to celebrate victory on 9/11:

GRETCHEN CARLSON: It’s all pray and no play. The controversial Ground Zero Mosque was supposed to be a cultural center, but it turns out it’s now an empty space with no community programs. Dozens of worshipers gather at the site for prayer services, but that’s pretty much the only activity in the building aside from a small martial arts class.

BRIAN KILMEADE: … Donald, do you want to finance the mosque downtown?

STEVE DOOCY: The Mosque-erade

DONALD TRUMP: No, I don’t think so, I’d certainly buy the site. But I don’t think it’s an appropriate use of the site. A lot of people don’t. You know, in the Arab world, when they have victory, they like to build a Mosque at that site. It’s very strongly out there. I think this is a terrible idea. It shouldn’t be done and let’s see what happens…

Watch it:

Fox is recycling rhetoric from more than two years ago when anti-Islam activists like Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer led an all-out war in their attempt to prevent the cultural center from opening. At the time, Fox News became a major broadcaster of their Islamophobic agenda. Back then, Fox gave anti-Islam activists a platform to make their virulent attacks against the proposed Park51 community center.

Multiple news organizations, like the Washington Post, debunked the fearmongering, pointing out that the “stated point of the project is creating a world where Jews, Christians and Muslims connect again in a way that builds mutual understanding and respect. This is precisely the opposite goal of the 9/11 terrorists.” Conservatives like Orrin Hatch supported Park51. And New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg spoke up in favor of the center as well, saying that freedom of religion should be tolerated.

As far as Fox’s new angle goes, it’s hardly a new development that the center serves as a place of worship; it was always slated to provide a home for Muslim worshipers in Manhattan. And the lack of cultural events likely has more to do with the center’s perceived financial issues than with a sinister plot: last year, a rental dispute between the center and its landlord went to court.

But unlike two years ago, the center faces no legal hurdles from the city to continue operating in the site. New York City’s Landmark Preservation Commission approved the center in 2010 and Mayor Bloomberg agreed. Park51 opened up last year without protests and little to no fanfare.

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough propagated the myth on Monday that torturing suspected terrorist detainees eventually led to the death of Osama bin Laden. Scarborough was discussing the upcoming film “Zero Dark Thirty,” which depicts the events leading up to and including the raid that killed the al Qaeda leader last year.

New York Magazine’s David Edelstein said the movie “makes a case for the efficacy of torture” and on Morning Joe today, Scarborough agreed:

SCARBOROUGH: The truth that Barack Obama learned the first briefing that he got after he won the election and that is that the CIA program, whether you find it repugnant or not, actually was effective with KSM [9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed] and other people getting actionable intelligence that led to couriers that eventually led to years later to the killing of Osama bin Laden. [...]

I had to listen to people tell me on this program for years that the CIA didn’t work. Waterboarding didn’t work and I knew that that was not true. It did get information from Khalid Sheik Mohammed and other terrorists that eventually led to not just the killing of Osama bin Laden but a lot of victories. And you can say it’s immoral, you can say it’s wrong, just like you can say Lincoln buying off a congressman with a patronage job, suspending habeus corpus doing a lot of awful things to end slavery and win the war was also actions that would make us uncomfortable in the finest dining rooms in Georgetown and on the upper east side.

Watch the clip:

While Scarborough didn’t provide any evidence to back up his case, experts, government officials and Republican lawmakers have said that waterboarding and other so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” did not yield the key information that led to bin Laden. The name of bin Laden’s courier was what eventually led intelligence officials to bin Laden’s whereabouts in Pakistan. And as the AP reported last year, former officials said that “Mohammed did not reveal the names while being subjected to the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding” and that “[h]e identified them many months later under standard interrogation.”

”This idea we caught bin Laden because of waterboarding I think is a misstatement,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said last year. Senate Intelligence Committee chair Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) has also said that the information that led to bin Laden did not come from torture.

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