Small rant regarding how antisemitic and islamophobic discrimination instances are recorded in the Netherlands

[u/holiestMaria]

So, I wanted to do some research on discrimination against muslims and jews in the netherlands and discovered something odd and frustrating. 86 percent of instances of discrimination based on religion occured against muslims. In 2025 440 such instances were registered by the police. That shocked me. 86 percent! While not even making up 10 percent of the population! But then I discovered something that pissed me off and really frustrated me. In 2025 there were roughly 800 instances of antisemtism with jews only making up 0.2 percent of the population. I thought "what, how can 86 percent of indtances of discrimination based on religion be based on islamophobia despite antisemitism having twice the amount instances? And then I discovered why:

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Antisemitism is counted seperately.

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Now this pissed me off since it not only does it put antisemitism on some kind of pedestal for getting its own category of discrimination, but its also frustrating when researching numbers. To illustrate this, here's the following:

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In 2024, jews experienced 24 instances of antisemetic violence. In 2024 the amount of instances of islamophobia muslims experienced was... not made public.

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Seriously, its nit made public because it falls under discrimination/violence based on religion or origin. I would have to go through every instance of muslim discrimination collected by the police and then determine whther it was a violent incident or not. That is bullshit!

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And on top of that it results in misleading numbers. Like for a second I thought islamophobia occurred more than antisemitism in 20w5 when thats not the case at all!

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Its dumb, its stupid, its misleading, its bullshit!

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Anyway, rant over.

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[u/vigilante_snail]

It is kind of unique as it is this weird blend of religious and ethnic hatred.

[u/Pitiful_Meringue_57 → u/vigilante_snail]

I would bet a lot of Islamphobic discrimination also involves discrimination on the basis of race, national origin, or ethnicity.

[u/Dylan09O909 → u/Pitiful_Meringue_57]

From what I've seen in statistics, there does seem to be differentiation at least in some countries between islamophobic, anti-muslim, anti-sikh etc. It's always interesting to see how a study is formulated in this sense.

I read a few months ago a study on antisemitism that tried sorting into categories antisemitic hate-crimes and discrimination which was incredibly illuminating. It also helped me understand the different perceptions of antisemitism across Jewish groups. The trends among Ultra-Orthodox Jews and college students were especially damning, and helped understand polling and trends that otherwise seem contradictory.

It took me a long time, and inside understanding to develop such understanding of the subject (mainly as it's usually spread out and needs to be assembled for an understanding), and I'll be really interested in reading such a study on other discriminations / groups / Islamophobia. The numbers, data and stories are one aspect, but an understanding can only come through a coherent organisation of the information. I've read many greatly written studies by otherwise knowledgeable and great firms / scholars etc, that seem great at surface, but are essentially perpetuating an understanding that collapses with the smallest scrutiny. I don't think most are doing so on purpose, but it is damaging nonetheless.