There has never been a real "anti-Muslim" backlash in this country, and avoiding reality isn't a useful alternative.

From hate crime statistics, anti-Islamic incidents were around 30 a year prior to 2001 (I checked back to 1999) They spiked at 481 incidents in 2001, dropped back to 155 in 2002, and has hovered around the 150 range or less since then.

To keep that in perspective, anti-Jewish incidents are typically around 1,000 in any given year, and the lowest number in the 1999 to 2007 time range was 848 in 2005. Anti-black incidents during this time typically float around 2,700.

And yes, if this had been a right-wing nut, you would have seen an entirely different response.