FBI: Anti-Muslim hate crime rose 67 percent in 2015

Hate crimes against Muslims in America rose 67 percent in 2015, according to a new crime report from the FBI.

The report, released Monday, revealed that in addition to the soaring crimes against Muslims, hate crime in America overall rose 6.8 percent in 2015.

The FBI’s Uniform Crime Report documented 257 anti-Muslim crimes in 2015, up from 154 in 2014.

The increase could be due, in part, to increased reporting by victims as well as better reporting and tracking by law enforcement agencies, although the number of all law enforcement agencies sending their data to the FBI decreased about 3 percent between 2014 and 2015.

Overall, police reported 5,850 hate crimes in 2015, which is up from 5,479 in 2014.

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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.

All but 19 of the 1,053 incidents regarding sexual orientation were anti-LGBT.

Critics of President-elect Donald Trump have pointed out that, during the Republican primaries last year, the Republican nominee famously called for a "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States," following a terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California.

He later backed off from the proposal.

The Associated Press contributed to this story