The San Francisco Bay Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-SFBA), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today announced the release of Unconstitutional Crackdowns, CAIR’s 2025 Civil Rights Report. Published by CAIR’s national headquarters in Washington, D.C., the report highlights that Islamophobia remains at an all-time high across the country.
CAIR said viewpoint discrimination against those speaking out against genocide and apartheid was a key factor in many cases.
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In 2024, CAIR offices nationwide received a total of 8,658 complaints—the highest number ever recorded since the organization’s first civil rights report in 1996. This marks a 7.4 percent increase from the 8,061 complaints received in 2023, signaling a worsening climate of Islamophobia.
“Vigorous public debate, a hallmark of healthy democracy, was replaced by crackdowns on people expressing politically disfavored viewpoints in 2024. Speaking out against Israel’s policies of apartheid, occupation and genocide came with a price,” said CAIR Research and Advocacy Director Corey Saylor. “For the first time in our report’s nearly 30-year history, complaints reported to us were often the result of viewpoint discrimination rather than religious identity.”
SEE: 2025 Civil Rights Report: Unconstitutional Crackdowns
CAIR’s research staff identified three key trends in the report:
- A Shift in Targeting: Unlike past years, where American Muslims were often targeted specifically for their faith, 2024 saw a broader pattern in which Muslims, alongside Palestinians, Arabs, Jews, African Americans, and Asian Americans, were targeted for their opposition to genocide and apartheid. This shift underscores the growing tension in American society around issues of global justice and human rights.
- Rising Employment Discrimination: Employment discrimination reached a new high, comprising 15.4% of all complaints reported to CAIR offices. This is the first time that employment discrimination is the highest-reported category across CAIR chapters nationwide. Many of these complaints stemmed from employees, particularly minority groups, being punished or smeared for speaking out against Israel’s occupation of Palestine and its treatment of Palestinians. This trend reflects a troubling disconnect between corporate promises of inclusivity and actual practices in workplaces across the nation.
- Increase in Law Enforcement Encounters: Law enforcement encounters surged by 71.5 percent, with 506 incidents reported in 2024, up from 295 in 2023. This increase coincided with student-led, anti-genocide protests, marking a troubling trend of university administrators using law enforcement to target individuals based on their activism and viewpoints.
CAIR-SFBA Executive Director Zahra Billoo emphasized the urgent need to address these troubling trends:
“The findings in this report reaffirm what our communities have been experiencing firsthand—an alarming rise in Islamophobia and the suppression of political speech. Here in the Bay Area, we have seen students, workers, and activists face retaliation simply for speaking out against genocide and apartheid. These unconstitutional crackdowns threaten not only Muslim civil rights but the very fabric of free expression in our country.
“We must remain steadfast in challenging discrimination, defending those targeted, and advocating for policies that protect our rights.”
While the report gives a grim picture, there were some positive developments in the fight for civil rights in 2024. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 9-0 in favor of CAIR’s arguments against the federal No Fly List. Attorneys representing individuals impacted by President Trump’s 2017 Muslim Ban reached a major agreement for nearly 25,000 affected individuals. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) acted to prohibit the sale of sensitive location data from Muslim app users, protecting their privacy and preventing its misuse for surveillance.
