Muslims: we are the new victims of stop and search

blares the headline from the Guardian which was picked apart by Scott Burgess over at The Daily Ablution

The article quotes Islamic and human-rights leaders as claiming that they are being targeted unfairly by police searches. However, a close reading reveals that all of the cited evidence of Muslims being disproportionately "victimised" and "harrassed" is anecdotal.

In fact, the only statistics cited concerning the ethnic breakdown of stop and search cases are found in this odd passage:

"Scotland Yard statistics give a breakdown by ethnic group, and show a slight increase in the number of Asians, who are mainly Muslim, being stopped by the Metropolitan police. From April 2000-01 it was 9.9%; 2001-02 11.8%; 2002-03 12.2%; and 2003-04 11.7% so far."
So the percentage has declined in the last year, then! (my emphasis)

Lots of links to check the facts. Didn't I post on this earlier? Oh, well, worth repeating.