The Elmhurst and Dayton non-incidents were not the first anti-Muslim hate crimes to be completely fabricated. In 2005 Daniel Pipes and Sharon Chadha combed through CAIR’s annual report purporting to document a rise in hate attacks on Muslims in the United States, and found “a pattern of sloppiness, exaggeration, and distortion.” One example: “CAIR cites the July 9, 2004 case of apparent arson at a Muslim-owned grocery store in Everett, Washington. But investigators quickly determined that Mirza Akram, the store’s operator, staged the arson to avoid meeting his scheduled payments and to collect on an insurance policy. Although Akram’s antics were long ago exposed as a fraud, CAIR continues to list this case as an anti-Muslim hate crime.”
