What a coincidence! Of all the many, many people wearing traditional Muslim attire in Washington, DC, the one that a greasy Islamophobe decided to punch randomly in the throat was Rashid Dar, a longtime Muslim activist, an employee of the pro-Muslim Brotherhood, Qatar-funded Brookings Institution. Dar was previously active at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with the Muslim Students Association, a Muslim Brotherhood organization.

I myself met Rashid Dar when I spoke at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in October 2008, and described him in my post at the time as an “arrogant and self-righteous lout” who “tried to shout me down — lest the crowd hear some inconvenient facts.” I wrote about him again in February 2010, when he was whining about Ayaan Hirsi Ali speaking at the same university.

And now he says he was punched in the throat, and he and Ibrahim Hooper of Hamas-linked CAIR are sure it was “Islamophobia,” and that it was Donald Trump’s fault. Mr. Dar, Washington, D.C. isn’t Madison, Wisconsin, so perhaps you’re not aware that big cities are full of violent people who lash out at or victimize random passersby. One night in the late 1980s, the bad old days of New York City, as I was heading back to my apartment in the small hours of the morning, I was relieved at gunpoint of the three dollars I still had on me after a fine evening in Manhattan, and soon afterward encountered a second group of muggers; I had to explain to them that they were too late, I had already been cleaned out. That’s life in the city. It would have been premature of me to blame CAIR and the Southern Poverty Law Center for creating a climate of hate against me, but even if that happened again tonight, I would not do so. Cities can be dangerous.

Rashid Dar may have been attacked for “Islamophobia,” although it’s a mighty coincidence for a committed Muslim-victimhood-monger to be singled out in this way. He may also have just had the misfortune of encountering a violent psychotic; there is, unfortunately, no shortage of those on Washington streets (and no, I’m not talking about federal employees). The attacker said nothing, but Dar is nonetheless convinced that it was “Islamophobia,” which reveals more about Rashid Dar than it does about this incident. Hamas-linked CAIR and other Muslims have on many occasions not hesitated to stoop even to fabricating “hate crimes,” including attacks on mosques. A New Jersey Muslim was found guilty of murder that he tried to portray as an “Islamophobic” attack, and in 2014 in California, a Muslim was found guilty of killing his wife, after first blaming her murder on “Islamophobia.”

This kind of thing happens quite frequently. The New York Daily News reported that “a woman who told cops she was called a terrorist and slashed on her cheek in lower Manhattan on Thursday later admitted she made up the story, police said early Friday. The woman, who wore a headscarf, told authorities a blade-wielding wacko sliced open her face as she left a Manhattan cosmetology school, police sources said.”

And recently in Britain, the murder of a popular imam was spread far and wide as another “Islamophobic hate crime” – until his killer also was found to be a Muslim. The Mirror reported that the imam “was targeted because he had made efforts to turn youngsters away from radical Islam.”

According to The Detroit News, a Muslim woman, Saida Chatti, was “charged with making a false police report after she allegedly fabricated a plot to blow up Dearborn Fordson High School to retaliate against the November terrorist attacks in Paris….Police say Chatti called Dearborn investigators Nov. 19, six days after Islamic extremists killed 130 people in Paris.”

And similarly in Britain, a Muslim woman was “fined for lying to police about being attacked for wearing a hijab. The 18-year-old student, known only as Miss Choudhury, said she was violently shoved from behind and punched in the face by a man in Birmingham city centre 10 days after the atrocities in the French capital on November 13.”

Now Rashid Dar says he has been punched in the throat. The next time you read a mainstream media story about how “anti-Muslim hate crimes” have “increased by 153%” or some such, remember that incidents like this one are used to arrive at such statistics.

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and author of the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is The Complete Infidel’s Guide to Iran. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.