LOCKPORT — Two women from Niagara Falls were sentenced to weekend jail terms Friday for their hate crime assault on a Pakistani woman last summer.
Niagara County Judge Sara Sheldon Farkas ordered Sheree A. Sabater, 39, to four months of weekends in the County Jail and three years’ probation. Antoinette S. Ivey, 32, drew two months of weekends in jail and five years’ probation.
The 26-year-old Muslim victim, who was walking with her two children July 14 near the Tops Market on Portage Road in Niagara Falls, was wearing a head scarf at the time, police said.
“This woman and her two children were just minding their own business,” Farkas said. “These two drunk, high, out-of-control women, and I use that term loosely, pummeled her to the ground in front of her children.”
The victim said in a later Buffalo News interview that she heard one of the attackers say, “She’s Pakistani and I want to kill her.”
The nationality was just a lucky guess, Assistant District Attorney Cheryl L. Nichols said.
A Shirley man has been summoned to appear at Solihull Magistrates Court after he allegedly ripped a veil from a Muslim woman’s face in Touchwood.
Police reported that Ian Brazier, 26, had grabbed the victim, also 26, by her head and removed her face covering as she walked past the Disney store, on March 3. It’s alleged that he then threw the veil to the floor and left the shopping centre. A Solihull Police spokesman said the woman had not been physically harmed but was left severely shaken by the incident.
Officers tracked down Brazier following a CCTV image appeal. He will now appear at Solihull Magistrates on June 13.
Chief Inspector Kevin Doyle, from Solihull Police Station, said previously: “Reports of crimes like this are exceptionally rare both in Solihull and the wider West Midlands. We are treating this incident as a hate crime as we believe the woman was deliberately targeted because of her faith symbolised by her attire.”
In France a young Muslim woman was threatened, beaten and had her hijab ripped from her head. (via. Al-Kanz)
The below is a rough google translation and video of the victim speaking about the violent experience. The original is in French:
The CCIF (suit against Islamophobia in France) met S., a young woman struck and insulted, her veil ripped off in Juvisy-sur-Orge, near Paris. Treated as a terrorist and threatened by an armed individual, S. relates in the video below the story of the Islamophobic aggression.
Below is a copy of the complaint:
Feel free to contact the CCIF at the slightest Islamophobic aggression. The work done by the watch group since 2003 has, despite a strong desire to hide the reality, created awareness to many that Islamophobia is real.
EL CAJON, Calif. — Shaima Alawadi’s family says they found the first note taped to the front door of their house on a quiet suburban street here. It said: “This is my country. Go back to yours, terrorist,” according to her 15-year-old son Mohammed.
Like many others in the neighborhood, Ms. Alawadi and her husband, Kassim Alhimidi, are immigrants from Iraq. Mr. Alhimidi says he wanted to call the police. But his wife said no, insisting the note was only a child’s prank. In 17 years in the United States, they had been called terrorists before, he said.
But last Wednesday, her 17-year-old daughter found Ms. Alawadi in their dining room, lying unconscious in a puddle of blood with a severe head wound. Nearby lay another threatening note, similar to the one the family found a week earlier.
Ms. Alawadi, 32, died three days later, and the police say they are still trying to determine whether she was, indeed, targeted because of her religion or ethnicity, calling that just one possibility.
“At this point, we are not calling it a hate crime,” said Lt. Mark Coit of the El Cajon police department. “We haven’t made that determination. We are calling it an isolated incident, because we don’t have any evidence of anything similar going on at this point.”
Isolated or not, the crime has shattered the sense of security for Iraqi immigrants in El Cajon, exposing cultural tensions and distrust that have often simmered just below the surface since the Sept. 11 attacks.
Hanif Mohebi, director of the San Diego chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said that many Muslim women in the area were worried that Ms. Alawadi had been targeted because she wore a headscarf in public, as many observant Muslim women do.
“The majority of the community that wears scarves are concerned,” Mr. Mohebi said. He cautioned against a rush to judgment before the police had finished investigating. Still, he added, “the community has gone through some hate crimes before, and the assumption the people have is that they’re going through one now.”
Just two decades ago, El Cajon, just northeast of San Diego, was largely white and English-speaking. But as wars in their homelands pushed more and more Iraqis and other people to emigrate, the Middle Eastern population here has exploded. El Cajon now houses one of the largest Iraqi communities in the country. Middle Eastern groceries and restaurants dot both sides of Main Street, while on the sidewalks, many families stroll by speaking only in Arabic.
Ms. Alawadi and her family moved to the United States from Saudi Arabia in 1995, after fleeing Iraq during the first Gulf War. They have five children, and, for the most part, Mr. Alhimidi said, the neighbors made them feel welcome.
Still, even before this month, he was already familiar with the kind of language he says was on the notes left at his house.
“Some neighbors, I say ‘hi’ to them, and they just turn away,” Mr. Alhimidi said in Arabic, with his son Mohammed translating. “More than 95 percent of the time, I feel welcome. But once in a while, people shout at you. They shout ‘terrorist,’ or ‘go back to your country.’ ”
Most people in town lamented Ms. Alawadi’s killing as a tragedy. Janet Ilko, a middle school teacher, said the news had come as a shock to students.
“It was upsetting to everyone,” Ms. Ilko, 47, said. “Our community is very close-knit. Our students get along very well. People have been here a long time.”
But tension between the newcomers from the Middle East and some of the town’s other residents was also readily apparent on Main Street, even this week. One woman, 30, who was at a park with her children and refused to give her name, called the city’s Iraqi residents “territorial,” adding, “maybe because we are at war with them.” She said her own background was Mexican, though she had grown up in Southern California.
That tension extends to non-Muslims as well.
“I’ve lived here for 32 years, and I’ve been told many times to go back to my country,” said Sascha Atta, an immigrant from Afghanistan. “Here in El Cajon, most of the Iraqis are not even Muslim, they are Christian, but people don’t know the difference.”
One of those Iraqi Christians is Lara Yalda, 18, who fled the country with her family in 2004, living in Syria for six years before coming to El Cajon, where she is now in high school. She said that last year one teacher told all of the Iraqi students to go back to their country, complaining that they took welfare and other money from the United States. That teacher does not teach Iraqi students any more but still works at the school, she said.
Ms. Yalda said Ms. Alawadi’s death frightened her.
“Yeah, I’m scared,” Ms. Yalda said. “I feel sad, because here it is a free country, and there is no reason to kill her. She has a family. So why they kill her? ”
The killing does not make sense to Ms. Alawadi’s son Mohammed either.
“There’s only three people that know what happened,” he said. “God, my mom and the guy who did it.”
CLEVELAND – A Middleburg Heights man pleaded guilty to putting a plastic camel with a noose around its neck on the apartment door of a Muslim person.
Christopher M. Sanford, 25, entered a guilty plea to interfering with housing rights of another based on the victim’s race, religion or national origin.
The U.S. Department of Justice said that on the morning of Dec. 1, 2009, Sanford took a plastic camel and a noose, and hung them on the door of the victim, identified only as A.F.A. The victim is a native of Jordan, who is Arab and Muslim, and lived in the Stonebridge Apartments in downtown Cleveland.
“The freedom of all Americans to live where they wish, without fear or threats based on their religion or race, is central to our way of life as Americans and Ohioans. This conduct violates those core values, values that we will continue to uphold through appropriate federal prosecutions,” said. U.S. Attorney Steven Dettelbach.
Sanford said he used the plastic camel because of the victim’s race and religion, Dettelbach said.
Sanford will be sentenced on June 18. He faces up to one year in prison and a $25,000 fine.
A hijab wearing Iraqi woman has been severely beaten and is not expected to recover from a violent attack on her inside of her home near San Diego.
Apparently this was a premeditated attack. A similar note to the one found by Shaima Alawadi’s body was found by the Alawadi family earlier this month, but the family dismissed it as a “prank.”
A family friend, Sura Alzaidy, told the newspaper UT San Diego that the attack apparently occurred after the father took the younger children to school.
Was someone scoping the house out before the attack, waiting for an opportune moment to strike?
A woman’s life has most likely been taken as she is not expected to survive the gruesome attack. What motivated this individual to do something so grisly? If what Alzaidy told the newspaper is true, and we see no reason why it wouldn’t be, clearly we are witnessing an attack motivated by hatred and bigotry.
Islamophobes will try and claim another Muslim did this, but how then do they explain the note?
*I want to point out that we cannot conclude anything at this point, some facts have been presented, such as the note but we will have to wait for the police investigation to relay more information on this crime.
A 32-year-old woman was critically injured and not expected to survive after an assault in her El Cajon home on Wednesday, police said Friday, and a threatening note telling the mother of five to go back to her home country was found near her, a family friend said.
The woman’s 17-year-old daughter found her unconscious in the dining room of the house on Skyview Street off Lemon Avenue about 11:15 a.m. Wednesday, said El Cajon police Lt. Steve Shakowski. Police identified her as Shaima Alawadi.
“Based on the type of injuries Alawadi sustained, and other evidence retrieved at the scene, this case is being investigated as a homicide,” Shakowski said.
Police did not disclose the contents of the note. Sura Alzaidy, a family friend, said it told the family to “go back to your own country. You’re a terrorist.” The family is from Iraq, and Alawadi is a “respectful modest muhajiba,” meaning she wears the traditional hijab, a head scarf, Alzaidy said.
El Cajon police Lt. Mark Coit said the family stated they had found a similar note earlier this month, however did not report it to authorities.
The daughter who found her mother told KUSI Channel 9/51 on Friday night that her mother had been beaten on the head repeatedly with a tire iron. She said her mother had dismissed the previous note, found outside the house, thinking it was a child’s prank.
**********************************
Update I: Shaima Alawadi has succumbed to her injuries according to this youtube user who uploaded video of Alawadi’s daughter being interviewed:
Update II:EL CAJON, Calif. (AP) — A 32-year-old woman from Iraq who was found severely beaten next to a threatening note saying “go back to your country” died on Saturday.
Hanif Mohebi, the director of the San Diego chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said he met with Shaima Alawadi’s family members in the morning and was told that she was taken off life support around 3 p.m.
“The family is in shock at the moment. They’re still trying to deal with what happened,” Mohebi said.
Alawadi, a mother of five, had been hospitalized since her 17-year-old daughter found her unconscious Wednesday in the family’s house in El Cajon, police Lt. Steve Shakowski said.
The daughter, Fatima Al Himidi, told KUSI-TV her mother had been beaten on the head repeatedly with a tire iron, and that the note said “go back to your country, you terrorist.”
Addressing the camera, the tearful daughter asked: “You took my mother away from me. You took my best friend away from me. Why? Why did you do it?”
Police said the family had found a similar note earlier this month but did not report it to authorities.
Al Himidi told KGTV-TV her mother dismissed the first note, found outside the home, as a child’s prank.
A family friend, Sura Alzaidy, told UT San Diego (http://bit.ly/GYbfB7) that the attack apparently occurred after the father took the younger children to school. Alzaidy told the newspaper the family is from Iraq, and that Alawadi is a “respectful modest muhajiba,” meaning she wears the traditional hijab, a head scarf.
Investigators said they believe the assault is an isolated incident.
“A hate crime is one of the possibilities, and we will be looking at that,” Lt. Mark Coit said. “We don’t want to focus on only one issue and miss something else.”
The family had lived in the house in San Diego County for only a few weeks, after moving from Michigan, Alzaidy said. Alzaidy told the newspaper her father and Alawadi’s husband had previously worked together in San Diego as private contractors for the U.S. Army, serving as cultural advisers to train soldiers who were going to be deployed to the Middle East.
Mohebi said the family had been in the United States since the mid-1990s.
He said it was unfortunate that the family didn’t report the initial threatening note.
“Our community does face a lot of discriminatory, hate incidents and don’t always report them,” Mohebi said. “They should take these threats seriously and definitely call local law enforcement.”
El Cajon, northeast of downtown San Diego, is home to some 40,000 Iraqi immigrants, the second largest such community in the U.S. after Detroit.
Update III:Reporting from San Diego— El Cajon police are asking for the public’s help in its investigation into the fatal beating of an Iraqi immigrant and have not ruled out the possibility that Shaima Alawadi was the victim of a hate crime.
“We’re investigating all aspects of this crime,” Lt. Mark Coit said Sunday. “The minute you rule out a possible motive, you start to get tunnel vision. As of now, we have not ruled out any of the motives for why people kill people.”
Near the body of the 32-year-old Alawadi, police found what has been described as a threatening note. Police have declined to release the text, but relatives and friends say the handwritten note warned Alawadi to “go back to your own country” and labeled her a terrorist.
The family told police they had received a similarly threatening note several days earlier but considered it a prank by teenagers.
Alawadi was found unconscious Wednesday morning in the dining room of the family’s home by her 17-year-old daughter. She was taken to a hospital, where she was diagnosed as brain-dead. Her family decided on Saturday to discontinue life support.
Police said that whatever the motive, the attack appears to be “an isolated event,” not part of an overall pattern of violence toward immigrants.
Coit said police are unsure about the murder weapon but that Alawadi was beaten with a large object.
Alawadi’s husband had reportedly left earlier to take the couple’s younger children to school.
Alawadi and her husband had moved to El Cajon from a Detroit suburb several weeks ago. The two areas are considered the most popular destinations for Iraqi immigrants to the United States.
LOUISVILLE, KY. (WDRB) – The Iraqi-owned business that police say was the target of a hate crime will not reopen. The business manager for Jacob’s Smoke Shop says he filed paperwork with the secretary of state to officially close the business.
Vandals broke in and ripped apart the Shepherdsville store last month, spray painting “Hate Arab” and “Go Home” on the floors and walls. Community members have now posted words of encouragement on the front of the business.
Owner Ali Alboodi told them he feared for his life and was returning to Iraq. The FBI is investigating.
A young Muslim student was punched in the face and racially taunted as she walked down a Dublin street wearing a head scarf.
A Dublin mother (23) has been convicted for assaulting the young Libyan, who was rescued by a passing motorist who stopped and helped her home.
Helen Doran’s victim was wearing a traditional Muslim hijab or head scarf. Doran followed her across a road after assaulting her and continued to shout racist insults at her.
Doran, of Castlecurragh Vale in Mulhuddart, admitted before Blanchardstown District Court to assaulting a 20-year-old Libyan student on November 2 last year.
Judge Anthony Halpin sentenced Doran to three months in prison, suspended for one year.
Garda Sergeant Maria Callaghan said the victim was walking along Castlecurragh Road when two men and a woman approached her.
The victim had just attended a FAS course and was putting credit into her mobile phone.
The sergeant said the woman was wearing a traditional Muslim head scarf, and Doran and her accomplices started taunting her.
The court heard one of the men grabbed the woman’s mobile phone and Doran punched her in the face.
Sgt Callaghan said Doran repeatedly shouted racist slurs at the woman, who crossed the road to get away from her attacker.
However, Doran followed her across the road and continued to shout racist insults at her.
Sgt Callaghan said a motorist stopped and helped the victim, who later reported the matter to gardai.
Ashamed
Defence solicitor John O’Doherty said Doran, a married mum of one, had been drinking heavily and was on tablets.
Mr O’Doherty said Doran was completely ashamed of her behaviour and had never been in this kind of trouble before. He said she was under the influence of one of her accomplices at the time, and he is also before the courts.
Judge Halpin said Doran frightened the young woman and made her feel like a lesser person. He gave her a three- month suspended sentence.
Bangladeshis in Kensington said they are living in fear after Muslim hate graffiti was found on a storefront in the neighborhood’s bustling shopping strip.
The manager of TDS Insurance on Beverly Road near McDonald Avenue, came to work Monday and spotted a nauseating sight:
“It was written on the outside – ‘Allah is s–t,’” said Abu Chowdhury, 51, who immediately called the cops.
“I have no enemies,” he said. “We are not a religious business.”
Although the hateful message was erased hours later, Bangladeshis said the sight left them emotionally scarred.
“It is just shocking,” said Mamnunul Haq, a Bangladeshi community leader. “No one wants to see anything like that.”
“We are a very peaceful people,” Haq added.
Kensington is one of the most diverse areas in the city – home to a Muslim stronghold mainly comprised of Bangladeshis and Pakistanis, living among Mexican families and Orthodox Jews.
Bangladeshis joined their Hasidic neighbors in July during the search for Leiby Kletzky, the 8-year-old boy who went missing in Borough Park and was later found dead.
They also blasted the vandal or vandals who painted a half dozen swastikas around Midwood last month.
“It happened in the Jewish community. And now it is happening in ours,” Haq said.
Hoping to quell the growing anxiety, Councilman Brad Lander (D-Kensington) held a meeting Wednesday night with Bangladeshi, Jewish, and Latino residents discussing ideas about how to prevent future hate crimes in their hood.
Lander wants to put a set of trees and benches in front of TDS Insurance, calling it “Kensington Plaza,” serving as a mixed race meeting spot.
“In the face of hatred, this community is coming together,” Lander said. “When these things happen, you have to stand up.”
The girl was attacked by older white girls who kicked her, pushed her to the ground and drew on her face.
Surrey Police said it seemed the girl had been targeted on 11 January because she was wearing a headscarf.
Spelthorne councillor Colin Strong said the incident was being raised at a meeting with neighbourhood police as an issue that affected the community.
‘On busy road’
Detectives said they were treating the incident in Vicarage Road as a racially-aggravated assault.
Det Con Simon Egan said the girl had been targeted as she waited for a bus.
He said the suspects had kicked the victim in the leg, pulled her rucksack from her, pushed her to the floor, used make-up to draw on her face and racially abused her.
After the incident, the girl picked up her bag and ran away.
Det Con Egan said: “This was an appalling assault where a young victim has been targeted in a completely unprovoked attack.
“It would seem that suspects targeted the victim for no reason other than because she was wearing a headscarf.”
In an appeal for witnesses, he said the assault had taken place at the side of a busy road in daylight and urged any pedestrians or drivers who saw the attack to come forward.
The issue will be discussed at a neighbourhood policing meeting at the Sunbury Youth Centre, in Bryony Way, on Thursday evening.
Three cars were torched and a mosque wall was spray painted with the sentence “price tag Gal Arye Yosef” in the village of Dir Istiya near Ariel in the early hours of Wednesday morning. The sentence refers to the name of an illegal outpost that was evacuated in the last few days.
The head of the Dir Istiya local council, Nazmi Salaman, told Ynet that at 1:40 am residents noticed a car with three passengers and an Israeli license plate driving at high speed on the village’s main street towards the exit. “Immediately after that the residents noticed that three cars parked cars were on fire near the mosque and one of the fences that surround the mosque had the ‘price tag’ graffiti.”
Salaman added that at first the residents called the Palestinian DCO to report the incident, later Israeli police along with IDF troops arrived due to the fact that Dir Istiya is in Area C. “This is a continuation of attacks against Palestinians and mosques in the West Bank,” he said.
He noted that this was the second time that village property was vandalized. “The first time was in September when the Palestinian Authority launched their UN bid, and then settlers came and unsuccessfully tried to set the mosque on fire.”
A Star of David and anti-Arab slurs were spray-painted at a mosque in Quebec
Harper condemns ‘heinous attacks’ on Gatineau mosque
Prime Minister Stephen Harper took time this week to condemn an attack by vandals at a mosque in Gatineau, Que., across the river from Ottawa.
“Our government strongly condemns these heinous attacks that have been terrorizing the whole community,” the Prime Minister said in a statement in French.
Bernie Farber, former CEO of Canadian Jewish Congress, wrote an Op-ed in the Ottawa Citizen about the importance of protecting those who face such despicable acts of racism as the vandalism of the Gatineau Mosque.
It’s difficult for those who have never experienced unbridled hatred to feel the pain that congregants of a Gatineau Mosque must be feeling today. Over the last two weeks hateful vandals have smashed windows, tried to torch cars in their parking lot and spray-painted anti-Islamic graffiti including of all things “Stars of David,” on the Mosque’s doors and windows.
Five hours west of Gatineau in the sleepy GTA bedroom community of Newmarket, Rita Brown and her partner Seun Oyinsan awoke Christmas morning to find that racist vandals had scratched an ugly epithet on the hood of their car. You see Rita and Seun are a mixedrace couple and it seems that there are at least a bigoted few in Newmarket who have yet to enter the 21st century.
Incredibly this was not the first such racist attack on this couple. In early September they were the victims of two other attacks. Swastikas and that despicable “N”-word were spray painted and scratched on the couple’s garage and van. The van also was defaced with acid and sharp nails embedded into small pieces of wood were placed under the tires. Ominously all this was followed by a warning that Rita and Seun were “not wanted in Newmarket” with a threat of violence.
In Newmarket there has been an outpouring of support. Local community newspapers have editorialized and condemned the actions. Neighbours and friends have rallied to the side of the beleaguered couple. In Gatineau condemnation came from the very top; Prime Minister Stephen Harper spoke out strongly, as has mainstream Jewish leadership all too familiar with such faith-based attacks.
Sadly some used newspaper online comments to remind us that there still remain a small number of bigotry’s fellow travellers.
Regarding the Newmarket attack one poster wrote: “I will bet a loonie or toonie that they did it themselves, they over paid for their house, couldn’t sell it and are using ‘racism’ to gain sympathy. They know some braindead liberal with White Guilt will swoop in and save the day.”
Sadly similar comments were also found online pertaining to the Gatineau incident: “This appears to be an inside job by one of the congregation trying to put the blame on Jews by spray painting the Star of David on the door …”
Thankfully, here in Canada, like most of the western world, we have created anti-hate laws as a fence of protection from the very worst society has to offer. Laws prohibiting the vilest of racist expression make it a criminal offence punishable by up to two years in jail. Acts of violence and property destruction motivated by hatred can add months and even years to a sentence.
Recently there has been a debate raging here in Canada regarding the necessity of antihate laws. There are those who believe that any restriction on speech whatsoever is an infringement on our valued right to free-speech. In 1990 the Supreme Court of Canada upheld our anti-hate laws by a slim margin. While it found that such laws were a limitation on speech, given the serious need to ensure protection of vulnerable minorities such an infringement, it argued, was justified.
I agree. We are a democracy based on justice and law. We understand that human beings are far from perfect, hence we created laws to protect society. Anti-hate laws are a kind of insurance for the future. Such laws help define us as a tolerant society. To be sure we must find the correct balance between freedom of expression and the right to equality that we all share.
Rita Brown, her partner Seun Oyinsan and congregants of the Gatineau Mosque have the right, as do we all, to live in safety, free from hatred and vilification. We have the responsibility as a nation to protect identifiable groups as defined in law from the contemptible few who find hatred their oxygen of life.
As we enter a New Year let us join hands with Rita, Seun and the Islamic community of Gatineau and wish them strength for a better 2012. Let us also hope that those who committed these despicable crimes are apprehended and face the full force of Canada’s anti-hate laws.
Bernie Farber is the former CEO of Canadian Jewish Congress. He writes often on human and civil rights issues.
By Rocco Parascandola, Matt Mcnulty, Kerry Burke AND Kevin Deutsch
(NYDailyNews)
THE UNHINGED Queens pyromaniac who unleashed a scary New Year’s Day firebombing spree had planned to take out “as many Muslims and Arabs as possible” by lobbing Molotov cocktails at worshipers inside a mosque, prosecutors said.
Ray Lazier Lengend, 40, allegedly told cops he had planned to inflict “as much damage as possible” by hurling all five of his firebombs from the balcony of Imam Al-Khoei Islamic Center onto the crowd below.
The hateful bomb-hurler, who is under psychiatric observation at Bellevue Hospital center, flat-out told detectives he did not like Muslims or Arabs, prosecutors said.
“This is a message to anyone who does this in the future,” said Imam Maan Al-Sahlani, leader of Imam Al-Khoei Islamic Center, where Lengend planned to inflict major casualties. “It’s a good message that justice will come for you, the police will come for you.”
The imam applauded prosecutors’ use of the hate crime statute and hoped it would deter further anti-Muslim crimes.
“Obviously there is something wrong with him,” Al-Sahlani said.
Lengend, an unemployed truck driver from Queens Village, will face a judge via video arraignment Thursday from his bed at Bellevue.
He faces 18 charges including arson as a hate crime and weapon possession for throwing Starbucks Frappuccino bottles filled with gasoline at four occupied Jamaica buildings — two of them places of worship.
Lengend’s brother-in-law, Bejai Rai, 73, said his Elmont, L.I., house was also firebombed because he evicted Lengend for not paying rent.
“He had a vendetta against us,” Rai told the Daily News. “He tried to kill my wife, my two sons and my sister. I’m glad they got him otherwise he’d be back to firebomb us again.”
Rai said his family could not sleep until Lengend was caught.
“This is the first night we’ve been able to rest since the bombing.”
Lengend carried out his spree in a silver Buick Regal, which had been stolen from a rental car business at Kennedy Airport.
He first drove to to a gas station off the Van Wyck Expressway at Hillside Ave. and bought five glass Frappuccino bottles, before heading to another gas station and filling them with fuel.
His first target was Hillside Deli on 179th St., where Lengend threw a flaming glass bottle that ignited upon hitting the floor.
He burned four other targets, including the mosque and a Hindu place of worship on 170th St., but did not inflict the massive damage he hoped for, prosecutors said.
Lengend confessed to three earlier attacks as well, sources said. He claimed ongoing beefs were his motive for all eight crimes.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) called for federal civil rights charges to be filed against a man seeking to “save his country” by allegedly stabbing a faculty member of the University of Illinois College of Law who he thought was Middle Eastern.
The non-Muslim victim of Sri Lankan origin was stabbed December 7 on the second floor of the Illinois Terminal Building in Champaign, Ill. The victim was singled out due to his perceived ethnicity and the attacker allegedly committed the offense to, in his words, save his country. The victim underwent surgery for a stab wound to his neck.
His alleged attacker, 23-year-old Joshua Scaggs, was charged with attempted murder and a hate crime.
We thank local law enforcement authorities for their swift and professional actions in this case and urge the US Department of Justice to consider what federal civil rights charges could be filed in the case, said a CAIR spokesman.
Adding, Our society must begin to address the rising level of anti-Muslim sentiment that can lead to such disturbing incidents.
CAIR contacted the FBI and local police to seek the investigation of a possible bias motive for the stabbing of a Sikh man at Fresno Yosemite International Airport in California.
Yaqub Bham’s visit to a residence in Tomball on Wednesday was supposed to be routine for the 61-year-old ADT salesman, who had come to inspect a client’s property before installing a home security system.
Instead, the homeowner, David L. Nienberg, allegedly tried to stab Bham with a fork, bit off part of his ear, and beat him so badly that he broke 10 ribs.
Nienberg, 42, of Tomball, is charged with aggravated assault. If convicted, he could serve from two to 20 years in prison.
Bham’s distraught family members want the incident investigated as a possible hate crime against Bham, a Muslim native of Pakistan who became an American citizen in 2007.They say an agitated Nienberg became violent after asking Bham about the origin of his name and where he was from.
Harris County sheriff’s deputies who responded to a 911 call from Nienberg’s family about 5:50 p.m. on Wednesday did not mention the questions about Bham’s name and origins in their report, said Deputy Thomas Gilliland, spokesman for the Sheriff’s Office.
Gilliland said Nienberg apparently became angry while reviewing the contract for a security system in his four-bedroom home on Everhart Pointe Drive. When Bham offered to make another contract, or change it, “the defendant took the backpack that Mr. Bham had and wouldn’t give him the backpack, which contained the keys to his vehicle,” Gilliland said.
The two men’s verbal disagreement then became physical, the deputy said.
Nienberg lunged at Bham with a fork, Gilliland said he was told. Relatives took the implement away, but Nienberg allegedly managed to get Bham in a choke hold, beat him, and bite him while muttering about military operations.
When deputies arrived, Nienberg refused to let go of Bham until they “secured the perimeter” and “secured women personnel,” Gilliland said.
It took three deputies to pull Nienberg off Bham, he said. They deployed Tasers on Nienberg twice, and even then, the furious man continued to kick and spit after they wrestled him into a patrol car, said Gilliland.
Victim hospitalized
Bham, who was recovering Friday in a local hospital, immigrated to Houston in 1997 and is the married father of three adult children. He and his family proudly became U.S. citizens four years ago, said his daughter, Shazdeh Bham, 23.
“When we moved to the States, it was for educational opportunities and just a better living, a better life,” she said.
Every once in a while, the Bham family hears negative comments like, “Go back to your country where you belong,” Shazdeh Bham said, “but it’s never bothered us. It never made us think twice about anything.”
The attack on her father was different, though, and frightening.
“I’m just really angry, and I’m extremely confused because I still don’t understand why this happened, and what triggered this … and why this person caused this much harm and this much hurt to my father,” she said. “Now I just want to see justice. I want to see this person punished for what he did.”
Shazdeh Bham said her father is a hardworking citizen who would never say anything negative about anyone.
“He is a patient and positive person,” she added. “He is very easy to work with. His family is his entire life, which is his only priority.”
Nienberg’s questions about Bham’s name and background suggest that the attack might have been motivated by racial or religious bias, said Mustafaa Carroll, executive director of the Houston chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The group on Friday joined Bham’s family in calling on local law enforcement and the FBI to investigate the incident as a possible hate crime.
“It’s because of what precipitated the attack that makes us think it has all the elements of a hate crime: ‘What does your name mean? Where are you from?’ And then boom, he jumped on him,” Carroll said.
“The level of hate speech and rhetoric that we hear on a fairly regular basis in society – the baseless accusations that Muslims are trying to take over America, or they’re trying to bring Sharia law, or they’re trying to subvert the government – this baseless rhetoric keeps the environment heated for something like this to happen, for the possibility of violence,” he said. “When you say that stuff over and over and over, it begins to play on your psychology toward a certain group of people.”
Motives a mystery
Nienberg has no prior criminal history in Harris County.
After hearing about his use of military terms, deputies asked Nienberg’s relatives if he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, Gilliland said. They were told that Nienberg is a veteran but that he had never served in any type of conflict, nor had he ever been deployed overseas.
Neither Bham nor Nienberg’s family members offered a clue as to what went wrong, Gilliland said.
He said deputies are looking into whether Nienberg was under the influence of narcotics or alcohol or had suffered a mental break, “because it was just incoherent, the things that he was saying.”
It will be up to prosecutors to decide whether to upgrade the charges to a hate crime, Gilliland said.
As it is, Nienberg is charged with a second-degree felony.
He is being held in a Harris County Jail on $30,000 bail.
The Hindustan Times reports that a Sikh individual was stabbed in an unprovoked attack at Fresno Yosemite International Airport in California. A hate crime is suspected. It is very common for anti-Muslim bigots to confuse Sikhs, who wear conspicuous turbans, for Muslims–a confusion that is symbolically representative of the profound ignorance that underlies Islamophobia.
A Sikh man waiting for a plane at Fresno Yosemite International Airport has been stabbed in a seemingly unprovoked attack, police said. The victim was treated at the airport and boarded his flight bound for India. Fresno police said Mitchell Dufur, 26, stabbed the Sikh man in his 50s in the upper torso Sunday evening in the security area. No words were exchanged before the attack. The man was standing with his translator when the attack occurred.
Dufur was arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon and possession of a knife in an airport.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) on Monday urged the FBI and police to investigate the incident as a possible hate crime.
“Sikh men who wear beards and turbans as part of their faith are often targeted by bigots who mistake them for Muslims,” said Sacramento CAIR executive director Basim Elkarra.
Gina Swankie in the Sacramento FBI office said her office was having “a dialogue with the group,” but would not confirm whether they had opened an investigation.
Police Lt Don Gross said investigators have not determined whether it was a hate crime because Dufur has refused to talk to police about his motive.
Two elderly men were earlier gunned down in Sacramento on March 4 while walking through a neighbourhood in Elk Grove.
Update I:
Ahmed Rehab tweeted about a second stabbing, another possible hate crime. Rehab tweeted:
An Indian American Law professor at #UIUC (unconfirmed) stabbed at train station by a man yelling “This is MY country”
The story is still unfolding, but is being reported here:
A faculty member from the College of Law was stabbed Wednesday on the second floor of the Illinois Terminal Building at 5:44 a.m. Wednesday.
According to the report, officers found Joshua Scaggs, 23, and the 41-year-old victim, a professor at the University.
The suspect was lying on the floor face-down near a utility knife, and the victim was sitting in a chair bleeding profusely.
“One of our faculty members was involved in that incident,” said John Colombo, assistant dean at the College of Law. “I can’t confirm (the name) to anyone outside of the College of Law community.”
Police took Scaggs into custody. A witness said Scaggs and the victim were seated in the waiting area when Scaggs suddenly jumped up and shouted that this was his country. He then attacked the victim, who is a non-white male.
Scaggs grabbed the victim around the neck and appeared to be choking him. He then forced the victim to the floor. The witness then pulled the suspect off of the male.
Scaggs was issued a $500,000 bond Thursday, according to the Champaign County Clerk’s office.
The 41-year-old victim, of Champaign, was transported to the Carle Hospital emergency room. Scaggs was later arrested on charges of attempted murder and a hate crime and transported to the Champaign County Satellite Jail.
Can you imagine if two Christian or Jewish-Americans were stabbed by Muslims in separate incidents? What do you think the reaction of the media would have been?
Anonymous vandals hurled a burning tire at the entrance of a mosque in Brukin, a village south-east of Qalqilyah. They also spray painted the walls and smashed the windshields of two nearby vehicles. The police have launched an investigation into the suspected hate crime.
The IDF said in response: “The IDF and Defense Ministry are working to locate those responsible and take incidents in which property is damaged very seriously, especially in the case of holy sites.” (Yoav Zitun and Omri Efraim)
So the IDF is “working to locate those responsible?” Well, maybe they should look at their own ranks, as three Israeli soldiers were recently arrested for partaking in “price tag” attacks.
A Muslim woman was spat at and abused by a gang of six teenagers in Telford who pulled off her religious headdress in a racially motivated attack.
The gang, who were all male, surrounded the 52-year-old woman and started aggressively pushing and shoving her as she walked along a footpath by the skate park near William Reynolds Infant School in Woodside on Tuesday. Chris Ammonds, spokesman for Telford police, said the woman was abused between 6pm and 6.20pm.
“After circling the victim the youths then started to racially abuse her. At least one of the youths spat at the victim too.
“The youths then pulled the victim’s hijab – a traditional Muslim headdress – off her head and taunted her with it but she quickly managed to grab it back off them and flee.
“The victim has been left very shaken by this incident and also suffered a long scratch to her right cheek as a result of the assault.
“The youths that surrounded the victim are all described as being white, aged between 15 and 17 and as wearing tracksuits and hooded tops or caps.
“Officers are very keen to identify the youths that assaulted this woman.”
Anyone with information should call Telford police on 101 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555111.
A Bronx Imam received a partially burnt Koran, delivered in an envelope to his mosque the day before Sept. 11th.
The Imam found the Koran in a brown envelope, which showed up at his mosque on East 198th Street at around noon Saturday. There were also papers inside the envelope covered with cartoon like drawing depicting hatred towards Muslims.
The Imam also found white powder inside the envelope. Tests determined the powder was actually pieces of the burnt Koran.
The incident is being investigated by the hate NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force.
Five teens were arrested and charged after a shot was fired outside of an Orleans County mosque Monday night as worshipers were leaving nightly Ramadan services.
YNN spoke with members of the World Sufi Foundation Mosque in Waterport as well as law enforcement officials to learn more about what happened.
“I’m just grateful that things weren’t worse last night, which they easily could’ve been,” said David Bell of the World Sufi Foundation Mosque.
Members of the mosque in Waterport said they have been harassed since they were first founded in 1974. They said they have experienced everything from people speeding by and shouting vulgar language to having their fence torn out and burned down.
Still, they said nothing compares to what happened Monday after nightly prayer services.
“As we were standing here, the one car came back and instead of speeding by that car swerved directly into our group of people. It clipped me,” Bell said. “I fell to the ground and what’s even more difficult is what happened after. There was a group of people and a shot was fired before the car sped away.”
“This is actually the first time that someone’s actually been physically injured and that’s a concern for us. Imagine coming out after a service, particularly a holy service, coming out and seeing someone flipped by a car obviously we’re going to feel threatened by it, we’re going to feel insecure about it and we’re gonna wonder where is our protection and where are our rights,” said Bilal Huzair of the World Sufi Foundation Mosque.
Huzair said members of the mosque immediately called 911 to report the incident.
He said another member, who was late to prayer service, spotted the black SUV and white truck parked down the road at the Lake Alice Public Boat Launch. He said the member recognized the vehicles as the ones that were allegedly involved in a separate harassing incident just a few days earlier.
Huzair said once David Bell was taken to the hospital for treatment, he and other members of the mosque drove to the boat launch and used their cars to surround the two vehicles full of teens until police arrived.
Huzair claims it took more than 40 minutes for police to arrive and that police only came after the teens called 911 to say they were being harassed.
“I think there’s some miscommunication as to what agencies can respond and where they respond. There was more than one law enforcement agency involved in this. We did have local Albion police and state police assisting the sheriff’s office on both incidents,” said Orleans County Sheriff Scott Hess.
“Whether or not it was properly responded to initially is something we’ll be looking at, but I can tell you on behalf of this county, this is something that we’re taking extremely serious and will be properly addressed to be sure there will be no further escalation of what’s already occurred and the harassment that they’ve been subject to,” said Joseph Cardone, Orleans County district attorney.
Investigators charged Mark Vendetti, 17; Tim Weader, 17; Dylan Phillips, 18; Jeff Donahue, 18; and Anthony Ogden, 18, with misdemeanor disruption of religious services.
Vendetti is also charged with felony criminal possession of a weapon for allegedly shooting a 16-gauge shotgun in front of the mosque where people were leaving. He was arraigned and sent to the Orleans County Jail in lieu of $10,000 bail.
Authorities said all five teens are buddies from Holley.
No charges have been filed related to Bell’s injury, though the district attorney said more charges are possible. Four of the teens are scheduled to appear in Carlton Town Court on September 6.
“I’m hopeful that something can begin to change,” Bell added.
Later in the day on Tuesday, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) called for appropriate hate crime charges to be brought against the five Orleans County teenagers.
“New York Muslims must be free to practice their faith without fear of harassment or intimidation,” said Faiza N. Ali, community affairs director of CAIR’s New York chapter.
People who live near the mosque are reacting to the arrests. Opinion seems to be mixed on whether the incidents are related to religion.
“Just kids being renegade kids, you know there’s renegade kids out there. So anyway nobody got shot I guess. Kid probably went by and blew a shot out of the window,” said Phil Coville of Albion.
“You don’t do pranks with loaded weapons. It’s unfortunate. Kids, I don’t know how old they are, but they have a way of wrecking their own youth with rash acts And i hope somebody will put the brakes on these guys,” said Patricia Smith of Ontario.
“They were wrong because you don’t go interrupt somebody’s thing and go shoot off a gun, that’s not right, that’s not right. They should think first with their actions, not try to hurt somebody,” said Deborah Rebar of Albion.
People that YNN spoke with said they know very little about the mosque itself.
YNN contacted Carlton Town Supervisor Gayle Ashbery, who declined comment for our report.
A 64-year-old man pleaded guilty Wednesday to violating the civil rights of an 83-year-old Somali man he assaulted in Minneapolis last year while yelling that his victim was a Muslim and should go back to Africa.
George Thompson of Minneapolis appeared before U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson in federal court in St. Paul.
Court papers said that Thompson, a former employee of the Transportation Security Administration, attacked his victim on May 4, 2010, because of the man’s “actual and perceived religion and national origin.”
The incident occurred near 5th Street and Cedar Avenue S. The victim was identified in court papers only by his initials.
The Hennepin County attorney’s office deferred to federal authorities because Thompson could receive a longer sentence under federal law, said Chuck Laszewski, a county attorney’s office spokesman.
Thompson was charged under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Protection Act, passed in 2009. Shepard was tortured and murdered in Wyoming by two men who believed he was gay; Byrd, a black man, was dragged to his death behind a truck by three men in Texas.
The U.S. attorney’s office in Minneapolis said Thompson could receive up to 10 years in prison.
On July 26, 2010, Thompson was arrested a second time by Minneapolis police, also near 5th and Cedar, in a similar incident.
A Somali man told police he was getting into a car when he was approached by Thompson and asked if he was a Somali. When the man said he was, Thompson told him he was going to kill him and began to chase and threaten him.
Thompson then went into the Nomad World Pub, where he was taken into custody. The complaint said Thompson was intoxicated and had two loaded firearms with him and a permit to carry them. Thompson was charged in that case with second-degree assault and making terroristic threats.
Laszewski said the Hennepin County attorney’s office will move to dismiss the charges in the July 2010 case once it gets official notice of the status of Thompson’s federal case.
LA MIRADA – The vandalism of a La Mirada mosque is not being investigated as a hate crime, Sheriff’s Department officials said Tuesday.
Someone threw a rock through the mosque’s newly installed rear doors between 2 and 6 p.m. Monday, according to Rezaur Rahman, the president of Muslim Community Services Inc.
“This is not being classified as a hate crime right now because there is nothing to substantiate it as one,” said Lt. Pat Valdez of the sheriff’s La Mirada Station. “(But) we are very concerned about it and have already notified our department’s Terrorism Early Warning Group.”
The congregation finished prayer at 2 p.m. Monday and Rahman did not return until before the evening’s prayer session.
“Everything was fine before I left the mosque yesterday afternoon, and when I returned later that evening, I noticed shattered glass on the floor near our newly installed doors,” Rahman said.
“I found a rock lying among the shattered glass and was very surprised that it could have broken through our very strong, double-layered doors,” he said.
Deputies from the sheriff’s Norwalk Station responded to the scene, 14225 Imperial Highway, 10 minutes after Rahman reported the incident.
Authorities took pictures and secured the rock as evidence.
The report has been filed as a vandalism incident and additional patrols have been placed in the mosque’s area to ensure its safety until the investigation is completed, officials said.
The mosque opened on Feb. 16 after an eight-month renovation that began in July 2010.
“This is something that motivates me to create a peace rally,” Rahman said.
Rahman said he contacted Rabbi Mark Goldfarb of Temple Beth Ohr and the Rev. Bill Miller of United Methodist Church, relaying the news regarding the incident and his interest in organizing a community peace rally.
“We’re all concerned with the situation and the Whittier Area Interfaith
Council is determined to make it clear that this is not acceptable in our community,” Miller said.
“It is an outrage and when one of us is hurt, we’re all hurt and it’s our job to stand together when things like this happen,” he said.
The congregation reconvened at 9:30 p.m. Monday for prayer which lasted until 5 a.m. Tuesday.
“At first we were afraid to publicize this, but we think it’s better if we do because we need to do our part to let everyone know that we’re here and we want peace,” Rahman said.
“It’s deeply troubling to hear about the incident at the La Mirada mosque. Unfortunately mosque vandalism around the nation is not uncommon, however, we should remember those incidents are not widespread and the American Muslim community continues to live in peace and harmony with their American neighbors and citizens,” Munira Syeda, a spokeswoman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Tuesday.
“It is also important to remember that as Americans, we need to continue to increase bridge-building and the understanding of our various minorities and those who may not know that much about the Islamic and Muslim faith. Mosques are American houses of worship and the Muslim faith is a positive part of our country. We ask mosque members to remain vigilant and report vandalism incidents to their local authorities right away,” Syeda said.
A similar incident took place on March 19, one month after the mosque opened.
“Luckily no one was here when the incident took place because someone could have been hurt,” Rahman said.
Police at Kilmarnock are continuing enquiries and appealing for information after an elderly man was seriously assaulted in the early hours of Friday 15 July 2011.
The 71-year-old Asian man was discovered with serious facial injuries around 0130 hrs on Friday 15 July 2011 outside the Community Mosque in Hill Street, Kilmarnock. It is believed that he was attacked prior to opening the Mosque for a prayer session and was discovered by two fellow members of the Mosque who informed the emergency services.
The injured man was taken by ambulance to Crosshouse Hospital where he is currently being treated for his injuries. Hospital staff describe his condition as stable.
Chief Inspector Wilson Brown at Kilmarnock Police Office said: ”This is a despicable act of violence carried out on a defenceless man. At this time there would appear to be no motive for this attack however we can’t rule out the possibility of it being racially motivated.
“It is believed that the man was attacked prior to him opening the Mosque and it is not known how long he may have been lying on the ground injured before two fellow members discovered him.
“At the time that the injured man was discovered by his fellow members of the Mosque, another two young men approached them to assist. Unfortunately these two men left prior to police arrival and I’d like to ask them to contact police immediately as it is vital that we speak to them.
“I also urge anyone who has any information which could assist us in tracking down the person or persons responsible for this sickening attack to contact police.
Anyone with information should contact Kilmarnock Police Office on 01563 50500 or alternatively CRIMESTOPPERS on 0800 555 111 where anonymity can be maintained.
The Hill Street mosque was opened earlier this year after the conversion of what had formerly been the Hillhead Tavern. The conversion was denounced by the Scottish Defence League who held a demonstration in Kilmarnock in June last year.
NIAGARA FALLS — The arrest of a Niagara Falls woman accused of using ethnic slurs and assaulting a woman of Pakistani origin is “a troubling symptom” of increased anti-Muslim sentiment across the country, the spokesman of a national civil rights group said Friday.
“How do you prevent something like this if [you're a] law enforcement officer?” asked Ibrahim Hooper, of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington, D.C.
“It’s almost impossible,” Hooper said. “I think it’s more of a job for religious and political leaders, who need to speak out against this anti-Muslim sentiment in our society, so that those who carry out these attacks don’t see tacit approval of their actions in the silence of public officials.”
Police described the incident as uncommon in a city that regularly welcomes international tourists of many ethnic origins, and a local Muslim leader said relations between Muslims and others generally are better in the Buffalo Niagara region than in many other parts of the country.
But police say good will went out the window at about 8:20 p.m. Thursday when Antoinette S. Ivey, 32, of Ninth Street, and another woman in a van hurled ethnic and racial slurs at a 26-year-old woman of Pakistani origin walking along Portage Road on the way to meet her husband.
The victim was wearing a purple head scarf, or hijab, a common garment among Muslim women.
According to the victim and other witnesses, the two women continued yelling at the victim after she met her husband in the parking lot of the Dollar Tree store on Portage, and when the victim asked why they were swearing at her, the two women got out of the van and assaulted her.
Before her husband could intervene, the victim was slapped in the face, knocked to the ground, punched and kicked repeatedly, police said. Her hair also was pulled, and she suffered bruises, pain and swelling on her head and body.
There is “no indication” that the victims and assailants knew each other, Police Superintendent John R. Chella said.
The victim was taken by ambulance to Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center, where she was treated and released, police said.
While police searched Friday for her companion, Ivey was held in the Niagara County Jail in lieu of $750 bail. She was charged with third-degree assault as a hate crime.
The crime normally is a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in a county jail, but as a hate crime, it becomes a felony punishable by up to four years in state prison, Assistant Niagara County District Attorney Peter M. Wydysh said.
Chella said this might have been the first instance this year of a hate crime, which his department is required to report quarterly to the state Division of Criminal Justice Services.
The Falls, he said, is a safe place for residents and visitors.
“Our numbers don’t indicate a serious problem,” he said. “We take each individual case seriously, but we don’t have an epidemic that we’re doing anything proactively to prevent it. I can’t recall any one [incident] this year.”
Police responded quickly and appropriately, said Hooper, whose group has called on the FBI to investigate the matter along with two other recent incidents in New York City.
Relations between Muslim-Americans and others in Western New York are “much better” than some other parts of the country, said Dr. Khalid J. Qazi, president of the local chapter of the Muslim Public Affairs Council.
“We’ve been visible in the community for a number of years, and hopefully that has made a difference in how we are perceived and Muslims in general [are perceived],” Qazi said. “We want to make sure we contribute to the growth of the country like everybody else.”
News Niagara Reporter Thomas J. Prohaska contributed to this report.
New York civil rights lawyer David Perecman comments on allegations of an possible attack on a burka-wearing woman in Harlem. New York City police are investigating whether the attack was a hate crime.
Aissatou Diallo claims that two women, one back and one white, attacked her as she was walking in Harlem. She said she was called a “f–king terrorist” and punched after she asked one of the women to stop taking pictures of her. The pair allegedly then ran off only to return and throw Diallo to the floor, pull off her burka and curse at her.
Both women who allegedly attacked Diallo have been arrested on assault charges. NYPD hate crime detectives are investigating whether the crime was a bias attack.
In New York, civil rights violation lawyers understand that being charged with a hate crime can increase the severity of an assault or battery charge.
“Being charged for a hate crime can make a rotten situation even worse for someone arrested in New York,” civil rights violation lawyer Perecman said.
New York civil rights violation lawyer Perecman is the founder of The Perecman Firm, one of New York’s civil rights violation law firms.
Members of the Muslim community are concerned that their place of worship has been the target of an apparent hate crime for the second time in less than a month.
The Islamic Center of Cartersville was vandalized earlier this week, according to a Bartow County Sheriff’s Department incident report. Deputies were dispatched to 71 Maple Ridge Drive Tuesday morning shortly after Bilal Mahmood reported the damages.
Mahmood told the deputy he was the last person at the center Monday night and everything was intact.
When he returned Tuesday at 6:30, he saw three front glass entrance doors with large holes in them. He also saw one window pane on the front of the building with a large hole. ”Bilal allowed me to enter into the building where I retrieved four large rocks that were used to damage the window and doors,” the deputy wrote in the report.
Amjad Tausique worships at the mosque and helped start that location; he said he’s very concerned. ”We’ve been working and reaching out in the community for a long time,” he said. Tausique said Muslims have been in the city for close to 40 years. ”We are tax-paying, peaceful, law-abiding citizens,” he said. “It’s totally not right for someone to come and destroy the place of worship.”
The center was also vandalized in March, and BCSO investigator Jonathan Rogers said the Federal Bureau of Investigation is handling the case and have leads.
Besides the damages to the door and windows, Tausique said nothing was stolen. During the last vandalism, a stink bomb was thrown into the building, which Tausique said smelled for days. Meanwhile, security cameras were installed and an extra patrol in the area at nights was requested.
Tausique said they just want to be treated like everyone else in the community. “We have families like anyone else, kids in school, jobs and business,” he said. ”Just because we are Muslim and we worship one God, doesn’t mean we’re not American.”
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – A St. Petersburg man is charged with a hate crime after he allegedly stabbed another man because he’s a Muslim.
“He simply made the mistake of stating he was a Muslim, and it almost cost him his life.” said Ali Ebadi, the son of victim Sam Ebadi.
According to the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office, 52-year-old Bradley Strott and Ebadi had been talking about religion when the man told Strott he was a Muslim.
He then became upset, grabbed the victim by his shirt and stabbed the man in the neck with his pocket knife, according to Strott’s arrest affidavit.
Strott said that “Muslims are the root of the problems,” the report states. Ebadi was taken to an area hospital where he has remained since the attack. ”He tried to murder my father and he spent a day in jail, I do not want another muslim family to have to go through what I go through.” said Ali.
Strott has been charged with aggravated battery and was booked into the Pinellas County Jail late Friday night. He bonded out Saturday.
The Tampa Chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations have stepped in and are talking with the FBI about this attack.
According to spokesperson Ramzy Kilic with the organization, the FBI is working with local law enforcement to see if they can upgrade the charges to a hate crime. Ebadi is expected to be released from the hospital on Monday.
DETROIT — A 63-year-old Southern California man who was traveling with explosives in his vehicle with the intention of blowing up one of the nation’s largest mosques where mourners had gathered for a funeral was arrested in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, Michigan authorities said Sunday.
Dearborn police said Roger Stockham was arraigned Wednesday on one count of making a false report or threat of terrorism and one count of possessing explosives with an unlawful intent. Stockham had a large but undisclosed quantity of class-C fireworks including M-80s, which are outlawed in Michigan, Chief Ronald Haddad said.
“I was comfortable with the fact that we had taken him off the street – he isn’t going anywhere,” Haddad told The Associated Press Sunday afternoon. “I think the society he wanted to impact is safe.”
Haddad said Stockham was arrested Monday evening without incident in the parking lot of Islamic Center of America, while a large group was gathered inside. He said police received a 911 call from a resident.
Haddad said authorities believe Stockham was acting alone but still take him “very seriously.” He said Stockham has “a long history of anti-government activities,” though he declined to elaborate.
The chief said he called the mosque leader, Imam Hassan al-Qazwini, early Tuesday to let him know of the arrest, and later met with Qazwini and mosque board members. He said members shared concerns about copycat crimes if the arrest was publicized, and Haddad said he understood.
“We never want to put something out there that gives someone the ‘how-to,’” Haddad said.
Qazwini informed worshippers about the incident during his sermon on Friday. The Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Michigan chapter issued a news release Saturday night and the police followed Sunday morning.
Stockham remained jailed Sunday on a $500,000 bond. A preliminary examination is scheduled for Friday.
Police didn’t know whether Stockham had an attorney. A public records search did not turn up a listed number for Stockham, though Haddad said he lives in Imperial Beach, near San Diego.
Dearborn, located about 10 miles west of Detroit, is the capital of the Detroit area’s Arab-American community, which is one of the largest in the U.S.
A Gresham man accused of harassing and threatening a local Muslim woman is behind bars for allegedly violating an anti-stalking order.
Gresham police arrested Martin Cervantes-Gracida, 30, of Gresham at his home in the 17400 block of Southeast Stark Street at 6:37 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 9.
He also is being held on a United States Immigration hold at the Multnomah County Inverness Jail.
The arrest comes a month after the alleged victim, a 52-year-old woman who lives in the same apartment complex, was granted a protective order against the man.
A Muslim advocacy organization – The Washington state chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations – also requested on Dec. 21 that the FBI investigate a series of alleged hate crimes that led to the anti-stalking order being issued.
FBI Special Agent Craig Mueller is investigating the case after the woman alleged local police did not take seriously her complaints of verbal threats and physical intimidation.
According to court documents, the threats began in early November when the suspect, Cervantes-Gracida, reportedly pushed the woman, trapping her with his body against a wall in their apartment complex’s laundry room.
Two weeks later, he allegedly threatened to shoot her dog and rape her “while you pray with your head on the ground,” the woman reported. He also reportedly confronted her in the parking lot and threatened to kill her, adding, “You snitch, called the cops on me.”
The woman had lived at the complex for a year without any problem until she converted to Islam and began wearing a headscarf.
She also expressed concern that while police helped her, they did not arrest Cervantes-Gracida. She alleges that one police officer told her she should consider not wearing her religious headscarf to avoid angering the neighbor.
King County prosecutors have filed hate crime charges against a Seattle man accused of accosting a supermarket clerk.
According to charging documents, Charles Anthel Webb, 42, told a clerk at a Central District Grocery Outlet store he would kill her if she didn’t leave the country.
The cashier, whose name is common to the Middle East and North Africa, was processing Webb’s purchases when he began berating her, a Seattle police detective told the court.
As the Dec. 26 altercation continued, Webb called her several derogatory names, then told her and a customer who’d attempted to intervene to go back to their “own” countries, the detective claimed.
Webb is then alleged to have told the cashier he would “get her” when her shift ended.
“I’m going to get you when you get off,” Webb allegedly said. “Go back to your own country.”
Webb was arrested nearby. According to court documents, he claimed to have been threatened with a box cutter at the store.
Charged with malicious harassment, Webb remains jailed.
A Tulsa man faces a hate-crime charge on allegations that he sent an intimidating letter to the Islamic Peace Academy and posted a video online showing him desecrating a Quran, court records show. Jesse Quinn Harrison, 33, was charged Tuesday with one count each of transmitting a threatening letter and malicious intimidation or harassment – what Oklahoma statutes call a hate crime.
According to the charges, Harrison is accused of sending a nine-page letter to the Peace Academy, a private school for Muslim children in Tulsa, “with the intent to intimidate.” He also made a video that shows him “smearing pork on the Quran and an Islamic religious figure and grilling those items,” according to the charge. The charge states that the video was made to “produce violence directed to others because of their religious beliefs.”
A man with the same name and Tulsa address as those listed on the charges posted on Facebook a YouTube video that matches the one described in the charges. The 5½-minute video, posted to YouTube on Oct. 1, is attributed there to a “Rockwell Porter” – a name the charges list as an alias for Harrison. The video and a brief anti-Islamic message were posted by Harrison’s account on several additional Facebook pages, including those of the White House and the FBI. On a Dec. 15 Facebook entry, Harrison threatens to “march on the Tulsa Islamic Mosque” on New Year’s Eve.
Muneer Awad, executive director of the Oklahoma Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said he didn’t know any details of the case, but he said more hostile rhetoric toward Islam has recently worked its way into the mainstream. “The rhetoric has not helped,” Awad said. “It has forced people to take an extreme stance.”
However, he said that although any threat should be taken seriously, cases such as Harrison’s are on the fringe. Many non-Muslims in Oklahoma have good relationships with the Muslim community, he said. “Whenever instances like this come up, we always have friends from the non-Muslim community to help,” Awad said.
A preliminary hearing for a Twin Falls man charged with malicious harassment was postponed Thursday in order to allow the defendant time to find an attorney.
John Christopher Larsen, 42, appeared as his own defense in Twin Falls County 5th District Court to request time to find a lawyer, claiming he was denied a public defender.
Larsen was charged with felony harassment on Dec. 23 after he allegedly threatened a Muslim woman at the Twin Falls Walmart on Dec. 22. Witnesses told police that they heard Larsen yelling at the woman, saying Muslims didn’t belong in the U.S., and threatening her with a gun he said he was carrying under his shirt.
Larsen said Thursday he admitted himself into a psychiatric ward for three days following the incident, which had limited his time to find an attorney. Larsen said he had also requested his military records that would show he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder after serving in Iraq.
Magistrate Judge Thomas Kershaw granted a continuance and reminded Larsen that he was under a “no contact” order, meaning he is not to contact the alleged victim, who was in attendance Thursday in court along with other witnesses.
Kershaw instructed Larsen to keep Twin Falls County Prosecutor Grant Loebs informed on his progress in finding a lawyer because Kershaw didn’t want witnesses to show up again only to have the hearing postponed again.
Preliminary hearings are scheduled soon after a person is charged in order to determine whether sufficient evidence exists to warrant a felony conviction. Continuances are often requested by attorneys to allow them to gather more information prior to a hearing.
A woman was harassed for being Muslim and sprayed with pepper spry by her attacker. Now the FBI is looking for help in the investigation. I guess Islamophobia i all made up?
The FBI has issued a more detailed description of a man who apparently sprayed a Muslim woman with a pepper spray and the public is being asked to help find him.
NBC4 first told you about this story Tuesday, after a veiled woman told police she had been sprayed with some kind of chemical by a man who came up to the driver’s side window in the parking lot of a mosque. He yelled threatening remarks and drove off.
The FBI is asking the public if they know a white male, in his 40’s or 50’s, 5 feet 9 inches tall with a medium build. His light colored, closed-cropped beard is coupled with a long mustache.
Authorities say his teeth are in poor condition, yellowish with several missing. He has light-colored eyes.
The image of the vehicle he was driving was captured on surveillance video. It’s a white Jeep Cherokee from the late 80’s or early 90’s and has a roof rack and black wheels.
Anyone with information on the man or vehicle is asked to contact the FBI at 614-744-2144 or Crime Stoppers at 614-461-8477.
The woman did not suffer serious injury in the incident.
Two men accused of attacking a Muslim religious leader in a Manhattan subway station were the targets Thursday of a hate-crimes investigation.
The unidentified imam claimed the two men called him a “terrorist” and yelled ethnic and religious slurs when they assaulted him at the Canal Street station early Wednesday, sources said.
Eddie Crespo, 28, of Staten Island, was charged with third degree assault as a hate crime and two counts of second degree robbery, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office said.
Albert Melendez, 30, of Manhattan, is expected to be arraigned later Thursday.
The incident happened at 3:25 a.m. on the northbound A-train platform, prosecutors said.
By Adam Serwer
Conservative writer Jonathan Tobin argues that the small number of Muslim hate crimes indicates that those wringing their hands about American Islamophobia are making a big deal out of nothing:
Even more to the point, the number of anti-Jewish hate crimes dwarfed again the number of anti-Islamic attacks, as they have every year since such statistics were first kept: 931 anti-Semitic incidents, compared with 107 anti-Islamic incidents, a ratio of better than 8 to 1. The same was true in 2008, when the figures were 1,013 anti-Jewish incidents to 105 anti-Muslim incidents. Indeed, even in 2001, the worst year for anti-Muslim hate crimes, there were still more than twice as many anti-Jewish incidents as those with anti-Islamic motivations. Throughout this period, the vast majority of hate crimes motivated by religion have been directed against Jews, not Muslims.
As I’ve written before, hate crimes are an imperfect metric for measuring anti-Muslim bias. Hate crimes statistics tell us that anti-Muslim bias crimes are thankfully rare and that anti-Semites are more likely to commit bias crimes. But that doesn’t mean anti-Muslim bias isn’t widely shared. Americans are pretty open about their negative feelings about Muslims — almost half the country admits to some level of anti-Muslim prejudice.
This sentiment hasn’t manifested as hate crimes, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t manifested. A Tennessee judge recently had to greenlight the construction of a mosque after weeks of hearings that focused on whether or not Islam is actually a religion, a seemingly absurd question that gets plenty of debate among conservatives. The Tennessee incident isn’t exactly unique. There has been a recent rise in the number of incidents involving people using local zoning laws to prevent mosques from being built, which is illegal under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. There have been eight RLUIPA cases involving Muslims filed in the past six months, almost half as many as in the nearly 10 years prior, with a sharp uptick following the controversy over the so-called Ground Zero Mosque. These aren’t hate crimes, but they’re disconcerting evidence of anti-Muslim bias.
I’d submit that if liberal magazines and politicians openly questioned whether Judaism was a religion, and that if liberal activists were targeting the seats of Jewish lawmakers based on their being Jewish, Tobin would see that as serious evidence of anti-Semitism. I’d also submit that if there were public protests at synagogues and JCCs all over the country held by people warning of a nationwide conspiracy to subvert the U.S. government, and that if members of Congress were being presented with shoddy national security analysis to that effect, both Tobin and I would be very, very worried about where the country was heading. It’s true that Islamic extremist terrorism is a real threat, if not an existential one. The number of actual terrorists is very small, and these responses only make sense if you want to hold Muslims collectively responsible for terrorism rather than the terrorists themselves.
Tobin writes that “the hallmark of American discourse since 9/11 has been a conscious effort to disassociate Islam from the war being waged against the West by Islamist terrorists.” Rhetorically, that’s more or less true about this administration and the last. But as far as many conservatives today are concerned, that’s old and busted. “Clash of Civilizations” is the new hotness.
Adam Serwer is a staff writer at The American Prospect, where he writes his own blog.
One of our readers, Jalal, emailed us to inform us of what he believes is a hate crime. He was a friend of the victim, and this is what he had to say to us,
i want you to know of a hate crime that took place in the UK just a few days back, we had a mutual friend so I’m sending this to you,
A 16-year-old boy critically injured in an attack in a Northamptonshire village has died in hospital.
Adil Basharat, of Milton Keynes, was assaulted in Stratford Road, Deanshanger, at 1100 GMT on Friday.
He died in Milton Keynes General Hospital on Sunday morning. Police said they had received no indication that the attack was racially motivated.
A 21-year-old man and three men aged 19 have been charged with Adil’s murder and are due in court on Monday.
The men are from Deanshanger, nearby Cosgrove and Stony Stratford in Buckinghamshire, and will appear at Northampton Magistrates’ Court.
Police appealed for anyone with information to contact them.
A tribute page on Facebook to Adil has been visited by thousands of people, some of whom have been leaving photographs and messages about the teenager.
this has not been mentioned in the mainstream much but this WAS a hate crime, he was attacked for being a pakistani muslim. i am telling you this as a certified fact,
It would not surprise us if indeed this was a hate crime considering the pervasive atmosphere of Islamophobia and the rise of such anti-Muslim hate groups as the EDL in Britain and Europe in general.
FLORENCE, SC (WMBF) – A national Muslim civil rights and advocacy group is calling on the FBI to investigate a message written in bacon at mosque in Florence.
Three chair members of the Islamic Center in Florence discovered the words “pig” and “chump” written in strips of bacon on the walkway along the mosque Sunday afternoon.
Mushtaq Hussain was one of the members who discovered the message after concluding a prayer gathering. He initially thought the message was a practical joke.
“Then later on, we thought seriously and we thought, ‘You know, somebody doesn’t like us,’” he said.
Florence Police Chief Anson Shells says the incident is currently being investigated a form of harassment. Because nothing was done to an actual person, no crime has technically been committed. They are looking into a possible bias motive for the latest incident.
The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) says the Florence mosque was defaced.
“We urge the FBI to add this incident to the growing list of possible bias-motivated attacks on American Muslims and their institutions,” CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper said.
The police department does not have any leads on a suspect. In the interim, they will increase the number patrols near the mosque.
Hussain said this is the second time someone has vandalized the mosque. Earlier this year, vandals broke windows in the facility. Apart from these incidents, Hussain said the center has never had problems before.
“People are nice around here. I don’t see anything, you know, serious, but you know, whoever did this, they mean something,” Hussain said.
“Shame on them,” said Darryl Hughee, who lives across the street from the mosque. “Whoever did what they did, it has to be a mental thing, you know.”
He said the Islamic center has had a positive influence on the community.
Hussain says he is not offended by what was done.
“He will pay for it himself,” he said about the person behind the act. He sees this incident as a simple case of ignorance.
Islamophobia knows no race and hopefully these kids will realize that attacking people for their religion or ethnicity is wrong and will not be sanctioned.
A Muslim boy says four bullies made his life a living hell in the halls of a Staten Island public school, calling him a “terrorist” and beating him every chance they got.
The victim, a 16-year-old high school freshman, told his father and the police of the constant abuse he endured, prompting the arrests Sunday of his teen tormenters on suspicion of hate crimes.
“[They] punched me in my groin, and I fell to the floor. They started kicking me, and calling me ‘You f—in’ terrorist,’ ‘You f—in’ Muslim,’” the victim, Kristian, told the Daily News.
Word of Kristian’s emotionally scarring ordeal comes during a disturbing spike in hate crimes across the city, highlighted by Friday’s sadistic Bronx gang torture of two teens and an adult because they were gay.
Kristian – his voice shaky, his hands clenched in his lap – and his parents spoke to The News on grounds their last name not be used.
The boy, the American-born, only child of Trinidadian immigrants, said the abuse began in October 2009 while he was a student at the Edwin Markham Intermediate School. He said the almost-daily abuse didn’t end until he graduated from the school in June.
He finally told his father when he began his freshman year last month at Port Richmond High School and saw two of the bullies sitting in one of his classes; he hasn’t returned to class since.
“I think I can’t go through a year like this again,” said the soft-spoken victim, who first told his story to the Staten Island Advance.
The four suspects – three 14-year-old Latinos and a 15-year-old African-American – were arrested on charges of assault and aggravated harassment – both as hate crimes. They were all released to their parents and are expected to be formally charged as early as today as minors. Their names were not made public.
Kristian said the bullying began when the thugs first called him gay and quickly escalated to him being battered for his Muslim heritage and blamed for terrorist bombings.
“I was very scared that if I told the teachers…they would beat me up more,” Kristian said.
He said he remained silent, hoping and praying they would stop.
“It kept going on,” he said. “The kids were in my class and they would see me in the halls.”
He said one of the teen thugs brazenly attacked him in class, in front of a teacher.
“[He] touched me here and here,” he said, pointing to his left elbow and forehead.
The teacher scolded the menace, saying, “‘Why did you do that for? He’s a good boy. Leave him alone. Why do you keep bothering him?’”
Outside of class, things got worse.
“Four kids punched me everywhere. They would spit in my face, and kick and punch me. I had injuries,” Kristian said.
Once he was kicked so hard he had blood in his urine and had to go and see his doctor.
His father, whose first name is Shaffiate, said Kristian, a once-promising student and gifted piano player, has given up music and his grades have suffered.
“He’s afraid to go outside alone,” the father said.
A 35-year-old Seattle man is facing assault and hate crime charges following allegations that he accosted a clerk at a Queen Anne convenience store.
According to police, Brock Stainbrook derided the man as being a terrorist during the Tuesday morning incident.
Writing the court, a Seattle detective said Stainbrook entered the 7-11 store in at 362 Denny Way. The clerk was standing near a coffee machine when Stainbrook accosted him.
“For unknown reasons a person threw change on the floor near the victim’s feet then punched the victim on the left side of the head,” the detective said.
“After the suspect struck (the clerk) with his fist he said, ‘You’re not even American, you’re Al-Qaeda. Go back to your country.’”
Another employee then stepped in, forcing Stainbrook to leave the store. As he did so, police allege the man tried to kick the second employee and damaged a barcode scanner.
Police arrested Stainbrook walking nearby minutes later. Confronted by police, he allegedly admitted that he “struck a person on his turban” because he disliked him. While the alleged victim’s ethnic background is not noted in court documents, his surname is common within the Sikh community.
Stainbrook has been charged with fourth-degree assault and malicious harassment, Washington state’s hate crime statute.
“Scholar” Robert Spencer seemed to be shocked that any sort of violence would be the end result of his constant barrage that Islam is associated with violence and terror. In a recent post, Spencer claims:
And even if he were motivated by rage against the mosque, what would that have to do with us? Absolutely nothing. We are working on peaceful protests against the mosque, and trying to raise awareness among the American people about who is behind this effort and what its significance is. We have never advocated or condoned any violence or vigilantism — unlike the mosque’s own leader Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who refuses to condemn the bloodthirsty jihad terror group Hamas. We are not responsible by any conceivable stretch of the imagination for everything any given opponent of the mosque does.
The situation in Europe has grown quite grave, and something must be done. It may be that the world needs a new Crusade, though of a kind different from those led by Richard the Lionhearted and Godfrey of Bouillon. We have seen in this book that the Crusades were primarily an act of defense against the encroachment of Islam. In that sense a new Crusade is not only possible but desirable.
Piles of heads, hands, and feet were to be seen in the streets of the city. It was necessary to pick one’s way over the bodies of men and horses. But these were small matters compared to what happened at the Temple of Solomon, a place where religious services are ordinarily chanted. What happened there? If I tell the truth, it will exceed your powers of belief. So let it suffice to say this much, at least, that in the Temple and porch of Solomon, men rode in blood up to their knees and bridle reins. Indeed, it was a just and splendid judgment of God that this place should be filled with the blood of the unbelievers, since it had suffered so long from their blasphemies.
And all the while, Spencer has constantly asserted that Islam and Muslims are all about “jihad,” war, terror, and violence. And anyone who says otherwise is lying to you. Look at what he said to Mark Jacobson:
“Muslims are the first immigrant group that has ever come to this country with a ready-made model of society and government they believe to be superior to what we have here,” Spencer told me. The thinking was clear to anyone who took the trouble to study the plan, the blogger and author of Stealth Jihad contended. “Muhammad said, ‘When you meet the unbelievers, invite them to accept Islam; if they refuse, offer them the dhimma—second-class status—and, if they refuse that, go to war with them.’ That’s it. Conversion, subjugation, or war. Three steps. Conversion, subjugation, or war … That’s what Muhammad said. And in chapter 33, verse 21 of the Koran, it says Muhammad is the excellent example for the Muslim, you ask any Muslim and they’ll tell you that: That is nonnegotiable, what Muhammad said goes, and that’s not some hijacker extremist Islam, that’s mainstream … This is how it is, you don’t need a bomb. I don’t think Feisal is ever going to blow anything up, because that’s not his game; his game is a societal, cultural penetration … ”
Notice that he lumps all Muslims together. No nuance; no qualification; no recognition of the reality of the world. No. “Muslims” in general. And if you keep saying things like this over, and over, and over, and over – like Spencer does – then eventually someone is going to put 1 and 1 together.
That is exactly what 21-year-old Michael Enright did. He took matters into his own hands. Read this:
On late August 24th he hailed Sharif’s cab. Enright greeted Sharif with “Assalamu Alaikum.” A flattered Sharif responded. Enright asked Sharif how his Ramadan was going, and a compliant Sharif explained it was going well. Enright then gave Sharif a hint of what was coming by proceeding to ridicule Sharif’s faith.
At the end of the ride, before stepping out of the cab, Enright then left Sharif a little piece of “freedom fighting:”
“This is the checkpoint motherfucker” and “I have to bring you down motherfucker,” shouted Enright. The New York Times reports that Enright then “withdrew a Leatherman knife and reaching through the opening in the plastic divider, slashed Mr. Sharif’s throat. When Mr. Sharif turned, he said, Mr. Enright stabbed him in his face, on his arm and on his thumbs.” Mr. Sharif pleaded: “I beg of you, don’t kill me. I worked so hard, I have a family.”
Now, of course, Mr. Enright did not say, “Robert Spencer made me do it,” and so Spencer can innocently deny that he has anything to do with this and another acts of anti-Muslim violence. Yet it interesting that Robert Spencer doesn’t distance Islam as he distances himself from anti-Muslim violence. He continually searches for bad news about Muslims and then ties it to all of Islam, using his “cut and paste scholarship” to do it. Yet, he is shocked to find that people will logically link anti-Muslim violence to his rhetoric. Are you kidding, Mr. Spencer?
What’s worse, he seems to suggest that the attack on the Muslim cabbie was somehow “made up”:
Was this attack on a Muslim cab driver in New York yet another faked hate crime designed to tar opponents of Islamic supremacism as bigoted people who are fomenting hate? It cannot be ruled out. I hope that New York investigators are honest enough and brave enough to say so if that turns out to be the case.
Are you kidding, Mr. Spencer? So, this whole attack was a fabrication? The Muslim cabbie and Michael Enright got together and conspired to fake this attack? Including the numerous injuries to his neck, fingers, throat, and shoulder? His pleas to the attacker to spare his life a sham? Was this also “taqiyya”?
The backlash against Muslims continues. I am sure Islamophobes will give this guy a break and say he was drunk, but do you think they would have given Mel Gibson the same break for his drunken anti-Semitic tirade?
A drunk barged into a Queens mosque last night and shouted anti-Muslim slurs as he urinated on prayer rugs, cops and witnesses said.
Evening prayers were disrupted at the Iman Mosque on Steinway Street in Astoria when the unhinged man “came in with a beer bottle in his hands, clearly very intoxicated,” said Mustapha Sadouki, who was attending services.
“He fumbled over to our rugs where people were praying” and then committed the despicable desecration, Sadouki said,
The man, identified by cops as Omar Rivera, also allegedly shouted slurs, calling the worshippers “terrorists.”
Two men managed to subdue him. They put him a back room and called 911.
Cops took him to a hospital and later charged him with criminal trespass.
“He stuck up his middle finger and cursed at everyone,” said Sadouki, 43.
“No one can pray now because the rugs are completely soiled. It was disgusting.
“He calls us terrorists, yet he comes into our mosque and terrorizes other people.
SAN DIEGO – The Council on American-Islamic relations (CAIR) is seeking hate charges against a man who assaulted a Muslim.
The San Diego chapter of CAIR on Saturday asked for state and federal hate crimes laws to be used against a white man in his 50’s.
The Muslim man was praying near Mission Bay park last Wednesday when the incident began. A man watched the Muslim pray and then followed him to a taxi stand where he had parked his cab.
When the victim attempted to enter the taxi, his alleged assailant first shouted, “You idiot, you mother f**ker, go back to where you came from.”
The Muslim cab driver was then grabbed by the shirt and punched repeatedly. The victim had to undergo hospital tests including a CAT scan.
“Because of the racial slurs reportedly used during this attack, we urge state and national law enforcement authorities to consider bringing hate crime charges against the alleged perpetrator,” said CAIR-San Diego Public Relations Director Edgar Hopida.
He said the victim believes he was attacked because of the recent failed Times Square car bomb attack.
Authorities have not revealed the name of the attacker or the victim but charges are anticipated.
The failed Times Square bomb plot allegedly hatched by Pakistani-American Faisal Shahzad has been blamed for a rash of racist incidents.
CAIR is the largest Muslim advocacy and civil liberties organization in the United States.
Police respond to the bombing of a Jackonsville mosque.
A white male in his forties allegedly used some sort of incendiary device to set a Jacksonville mosque on fire during prayer time. Worshipers chased the criminal (terrorist?) away, and thankfully nobody was hurt, but the mosque sustained fire damage.First Coast News is reporting:
Possible Hate Crime Under Investigation after Fire at Islamic Center of NE Florida
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A fire at a mosque on the Southside is under investigation as a possible hate crime.
Worshipers at the Islamic Center of Northeast Florida heard a loud noise outside the mosque shortly before evening prayers Monday night.
Witnesses went outside and found some type of incendiary device had started a fire. The fire was put out with a fire extinguisher. No one was hurt.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said the fire marshal, ATF and FBI representatives responded to the incident, which is being looked at as a possible hate crime.
“A possible bias-motivated attack on a house of worship should be of great concern to Americans of all faiths, and particularly to our nation’s religions and political leaders,” said CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad. “Those who shape public opinion must begin to speak out against the rising level of anti-Muslim sentiment in our society.”
CAIR says a man in his 40s entered the Islamic Center on April 4, and shouted, “Stop this blaspheming!” The man said he’d be back as people chased him away.
Can you imagine the national hysteria if a Muslim had bombed a synagogue or church? Meanwhile, this story will barely be mentioned. No wonder so many people think that all terrorists are Muslims. Will the Muslim worshipers who bravely chased the man away be honored in any way? Can one imagine the honors heaped on Jewish or Christian parishioners had they chased away a Muslim who had done such a thing?
Greek Orthodox priest rushed to hospital; found guilty of looking Arab
We reported this in November of last year; Jason D. Bruce, a Marine reservist, physically assaulted a Greek Orthodox priest, mistaking him for an Arab (and thus a terrorist, since we all know that Arab = terrorist). Bruce hit the Muslim-looking man with a tire iron, chasing him for three blocks. The Tampa Bay Times had reported:
Tampa police: Marine reservist attacked Greek priest he mistook for terrorist
TAMPA — Marine reservist Jasen Bruce was getting clothes out of the trunk of his car Monday evening when a bearded man in a robe approached him.
That man, a Greek Orthodox priest named Father Alexios Marakis, speaks little English and was lost, police said. He wanted directions.
What the priest got instead, police say, was a tire iron to the head. Then he was chased for three blocks and pinned to the ground — as the Marine kept a 911 operator on the phone, saying he had captured a terrorist.
Can you imagine what would have happened if Bruce had done the same thing to a Jewish or black person? The book would have been thrown at him. Well, this was just a hate crime against a raghead. (Ok fine, he wasn’t really a raghead…but the point is that Bruce thought he was a raghead.)
Anyways, here’s an unfortunate update: James D. Bruce is getting off scot-free; the Tampa Bay Times recently wrote:
Charges dropped against Marine reservist accused of attacking priest in Tampa
By Colleen Jenkins, Kameel Stanley and Alexandra Zayas, Times Staff Writers
In Print: Wednesday, March 10, 2010
…
Bruce was arrested on a charge of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. The case gained national attention and drew strong reactions from the public, most of it negative toward Bruce.
On Tuesday, the Hillsborough State Attorney’s Office announced it will not pursue any criminal charges against him.
Police said that she went to the Muslim Mosque Association in the 400 block of V Street about 12:45 p.m. Tuesday. Once inside the Southside Park neighborhood house of worship, the woman is suspected of tearing several items off the wall and breaking them, a police activity log reported. She also threw some books, police said.
When confronted by congregation members, she took prayer items and fled, according to the log. Mosque members followed her and police officers arrested her shortly after 1 p.m. in Southside Park.
The mosque, which opened in 1947, is said to be the oldest mosque west of the Rocky Mountains.
Mendocino County District Attorney Meredith Lintott has charged a second man with committing a hate crime after reviewing his interaction in mid-January with clerks at Jensen’s Truck Stop in Ukiah.
Meanwhile, the owner of Jensen’s Truck Stop says he’s rethinking improvements there after his employees were the victims of two hate crimes in a month.
Two clerks of Pakistani descent were the victims of the second hate crime in a month at Jensen’s on Lovers Lane in Ukiah, when Redwood Valley resident Cody M. Cranford, 21, allegedly assaulted them Friday night.
It was obvious Cranford was intoxicated when he entered the truck stop, according to Capt. Kurt Smallcomb of the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office. He became angry when he asked to use the phone inside and was told to use the pay phone outside instead, Smallcomb said.
Cranford physically attacked clerks Lateef Kamal and Waqar Malik, punching their heads and faces and making racial slurs. Smallcomb said he grabbed one of the men by his sweater and dragged him outside while continuing to hit him. Then Cranford fled and the clerks called 9-1-1.
They identified their alleged attacker after police found Cranford at a nearby bowling alley.
Cranford’s bail was set at $150,000, and he is due to appear in court Wednesday.
The incident comes just more than two weeks after the Jan. 12 incident when Joseph Anthony Frank, 63, of Redwood Valley, made an apparently unprovoked attack on clerk Ahmed Kahn inside the truck.
Mendocino County District Attorney Meredith Lintott said Frank walked in and “went into a diatribe of derogatory names towards the store clerk.”
Frank’s anger built until he threatened to kill Kahn, then began to remove his jacket. He lunged across the counter and hit Kahn on the lower left side of his head with a closed fist, according to Lintott.
Frank drove away, and the California Highway Patrol arrested him on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol, driving with a blood-alcohol level greater than the legal limit of 0.08 percent, and making terrorist threats.
The MCSO investigated the third charge, and the District Attorney’s Office ultimately charged Frank with a felony count of committing a hate crime.
Lintott said what her attorneys look for to decide whether to charge someone with a hate crime is “a biased motive that caused the offender to act.”
State law defines a hate crime as a criminal act committed wholly or partially because of the victim’s disability, gender, nationality, race or ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or association with a person or group marked by one or more of those characteristics.
“Obviously that’s not something we tolerate in Mendocino County,” Lintott said.
Haji Alam, who owns Jensen’s Truck stop and two other gas stations in Ukiah, said, “We get customers like that in and out sometimes, but we usually try to ignore them.”
Alam, a U.S. citizen and Ukiah resident of Pakistani descent, took over the operation of the truck stop last April when he bought the lease from previous tenants. Now he’s thinking of improving the building, but the apparently racially-motivated incidents have made him think twice.
“Now I wonder, should I do it, should I not do it,” Alam said.
He added, “The majority of the customers are nice people, and I like living here.”
Tiffany Revelle can be reached at udjtr@pacific.net, or at 468-3523. Editor’s note: This article was edited to correct one incorrect reference to the location of the incidents.
It seems like Geert Wilders racism and anti-Muslim discourse is going to catch up with him, but don’t hold your breath.
This article is from the Morroco Post and is littered with a lot of grammatical mistakes but it is informative:
By Rachid Chelouah\ Cambridge \ England
The most popular Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders asked judges today 13 January 2010 during his first meeting at court for mitigation to reduce the penalty regarding his accusation of Islamophobia.
The far-right Dutch politician who is known for his hate for Muslims and Islam and who was once denied entry to the British territory at London – Heathrow airport by the immigration officials because of his racist views towards the Islamic religion, asked judges to drop or reduce charges against him since his racist discourse is met with freedom of speech right.
The suspect is facing charges because of hate crime based on his intolerance and insulting Muslims as a group which makes of his trail very serious with few chances to be discharged or acquitted within the course of justice.
At Amsterdam District Court, Wilders tried to politicize his trial saying that the session was “the first day of a political trial” in an attempt to associate his trail to political agenda of his party in a way to avoid or win the public support
The most popular politician in Netherland built his Freedom Party movement on anti-immigrant and anti-Islam principals while calling for banning the Quran in the Netherlands and deny entry to any immigrant to the country as well as taxing clothing commonly worn by Muslims, such as headscarves, because they “pollute” the Dutch landscape.
In retrospect to the year 2008, Geert Wilders linked Quran verses with terrorism and violence in his 17 minutes in length film “Fitna” . The MP Geert Wilders has been extended to include inciting hatred against Moroccans and non-Western immigrants
If found guilty Wilders could face a maximum sentence of two years in prison, though a fine of up to euro18, 500 ($26,800) can apply.
Muslim graves in Manchester have been desecrated, but of course Islamophobia doesn’t “exist.” No doubt the anti-Muslim blogosphere will say that this is just resistance to so-called “Islamization” and from Europe turning into a Eurabia. Can we expect swift condemnations from the “preserver’s of European culture?” (hat tip: Islamophobia-Watch)
UP to 20 Muslim graves have been vandalised in a racially motivated attack at a south Manchester cemetery.
Vandals struck at the Southern Cemetery on Barlow Moor Road sometime overnight on Thursday.
Staff arrived at the cemetery to find up to 20 gravestones had been deliberately pushed over, and a number had broken.
The attack is being treated as racially motivated as only Muslim graves were targeted.
Det Con Rob Southern said: “This is the worst sort of vandalism imaginable. The graves of your loved ones should be a place where they can rest peacefully and that is absolutely sacrosanct.
“The families of those whose graves have been vandalised will be rightly traumatised and deeply upset. If we do catch the people who committed these atrocious acts, then they should be made to see the grief and pain they have caused.
“Sadly, we are treating this as a hate crime as only the Muslim section of gravestones were attacked. This sort of mindless, racist behaviour must be utterly condemned and I’m sure the whole community will be outraged.
“That is why it is so important we find the culprits. Please, if you do know who was responsible then call us because this is a very serious crime and the families who have suffered such indignity deserve justice.”
We have this on point commentary by Islamophobia-Watch,
Who Incites Hatred against Muslims in Manchester?
The impact of Saturday’s planned English Defence League demonstration in Manchester has rightly been highlighted in coverage of the desecration of Muslim graves in the city’s Southern Cemetery. But the role of the British National Party in inciting hatred against Manchester’s Muslim community should not be ignored.
In recent weeks the BNP have conducted a hysterical campaign (“Genocide: how Islamic colonisation destroys your heritage”) against the conversion of a derelict church in Longsight into an Islamic Centre. The BNP made a particular issue of what they falsely claimed was the demolition of the (long disused) cemetery:
“The bloodless genocide and ethnic cleansing of the British people and culture continues apace with the latest example being the ripping up of a century old Christian cemetery to make way for a mosque in Manchester. The grave desecrations, being carried out with a large Komatsu earthmover in the graveyard of the St John the Apostle and Evangelist church at the corner of Holmfirth Street and St John’s Road, is part of the re-opening of this nineteenth century church as the Dar-ul-Ulum Qadria Jilania ‘Islamic Centre’….
“These Christian British graves – the only remnant of the now ethnically cleansed British people in the area – are obviously offensive to the Muslim colonisers, who have brought in the earthmoving machine to smash up the gravestones which are being literally crushed to rubble. St John the Apostle and Evangelist church is a real time history lesson of what will happen to Britain unless the insane multicultural Lib/Lab/Con genocidal policies of mass Third World immigration are not only brought to an end, but reversed.”
Of course, in line with their new respectable image, the lesson drawn by the BNP is that the “indigenous population” should cast a vote for their party in elections: “The British voters will soon be faced with a choice between their continued extermination at the hands of the Lib/Lab/Con ethnic cleansing party, or their survival as a free and independent indigenous people with the BNP.”
But it is hardly surprising that this sort of inflammatory language should have motivated some of the BNP’s supporters to take more direct action against the “Muslim colonisers”.
What is going on in Long Island county? There have been a string of violent attacks against minorities that are linked to racism and bigotry. The New York Postreports that less than a week ago,
two teenagers plead not guilty to assault as a hate crime in the robbery and beating of Ecuadorean day laborer Milton Balbuca. A 20-year-old also was charged in the Aug. 14 attack.
Police said they shouted anti-Mexican remarks and racial epithets as they attacked Balbuca near the Patchogue train station – the same area where another Ecuadorean immigrant, 37-year-old dry cleaning worker Marcelo Lucero, was stabbed and killed in November. Patchogue is about 15 miles southeast of Smithtown near Long Island’s southern shore.
Seven teenagers have pleaded not guilty to hate crime and other charges in Lucero’s death, which helped spur an ongoing U.S. Justice Department investigation into bias crimes on eastern Long Island.
Strife over thousands of immigrants from Central and South America has percolated in the area for nearly a decade, sometimes erupting in violence.
Two men are serving long prison terms for attempted murder after luring two Mexican laborers to a warehouse in 2000 with the promise of work, then beating them with shovels and landscaping tools. In 2003, teenagers tossed fireworks through a Mexican family’s window on the Fourth of July, damaging the home.
This pattern of racist hate attacks has now targeted Muslims, and in a case reminiscent of the one in Seattle involving Eric Gardner, a young man described as having a “virulent hatred for Islam” attacked two women and threatened to kill them because of their Islamic dress and religion. Of course, to those in the anti-Muslim cottage industry it won’t be anything, in fact they might spin it as a set up or as an unimportant minor incident. They will also deny any involvement or part in stoking the flames that contribute to such heinous crimes.
In the same article the NY Post reports,
A landscaper with a virulent hatred of Islam tried to run over two Muslim women at a suburban gas station after threatening to kill them because of their religion, police said Thursday.
Joseph Ballance, 23, pleaded not guilty Thursday to aggravated harassment in the Aug. 20 confrontation…Ballance approached 49-year-old Chervern Cartier and her 20-year-old daughter, who were wearing the traditional Muslim robes called abayas, in a service station parking lot in Smithtown, authorities said. The daughter’s name was not released.
After hurling epithets at the women and threatening to “chop you up into little pieces and kill you,” Ballance spat on their car and drove his own toward them before driving off, according to police and a court complaint.
The self-employed landscaper later told investigators, “They don’t belong here” and “They shouldn’t be walking around like that,” Detective Sgt. Robert Reecks said.
“He is full of hatred,” Reecks said. “He saw them, the way they were dressed, and it just set him off.”
Ballance was being held on $10,000 cash bond. He is represented by the county Legal Aid Society, where the telephone rang unanswered Thursday evening. The organization has a policy of not commenting on ongoing cases. A message left at his Islandia home wasn’t immediately returned.
The women weren’t hurt. One of them took down the license plate number on the car Ballance was driving and gave it to police, Reecks said. No working telephone number for Cartier could be found.
The misdemeanor aggravated harassment charge against Ballance is used for crimes related to a victim’s race, religion or certain other characteristics. If convicted, he could face up to four years in prison.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a national Muslim advocacy group, urged authorities to consider federal civil rights charges against Ballance. A spokesman for federal prosecutors didn’t immediately return a telephone call Thursday evening.
So will the haters out there continue to claim that Islamophobia doesn’t exist? That it is a misnomer? That fearing someones religious dress is not irrational? Maybe Pamela Geller the “freedom fighter” will lionize this man and set up an elaborate defense that he was justified?
We have had commenters, usually from Jihad Watch and other hate sites who come on here and minimize Islamophobia and in fact deny that it even exists. We usually have fun with such commenters and their ideologies, satirizing or poking fun at the truly wide-eyed conspiratorial and selective arguments they and their heroes peddle.
However, there are times when anti-Muslimism and Islamophobia aren’t so funny, and that is when it leads to violence and heinous criminality. This was the case in the 90′s when thousands of Bosnians were massacred in the worst genocide in Europe since World War II for no other reason than being Muslim.
Today, in the West we have also had a barrage of scenarios which highlight the danger of the rhetoric of anti-Muslims. In Germany, we had the brutal murder of Marwa Sherbini and her child in a courtroom by a man who was convicted of verbally abusing her, calling her a “terrorist.” Marwa Sherbini, now referred to as the Hijab Martyr was stabbed 18 times.
The following is particularly revealing in light of the report from Homeland Security that warned about the rise of Right-Wing Extremism. In early July, Eric Gardner was arrested in Seattle for assault and felony harassment of a Muslim woman wearing the hijab. According to the SeattlePi,
Police have arrested a man accused of threatening a local woman and her baby because of their race and religion.
The incident took place on July 1 when the 25-year-old woman and her 6-month-old baby visited the Seattle Indian Health Board at 611 12th Ave. South, according to the statement of probable cause.
Investigators said Eric Gardner reportedly made derogatory comments such as,”You Muslim people scare people when you wear that clothing,” and “When I see a black woman, it makes me want to throw up.”
The alarmed mother said she asked him what was wrong, to which he responded, “I’m talking to you (expletive), Muslim people,” the document said.
When the woman said, “What I wear does not make me a bad person,” Gardner told her, “You scare people,” and cursed at her, the woman told detectives.
The woman tried to move away from the aggressive man, but he followed her. He then pulled out a sheath knife with an 8- to 10-inch blade, held it in front of her face and said, “I’m going to cut you and your baby with this knife,” the statement said.
Gardner slammed the knife on the counter, struggling to get it out of the sheath, detectives said. A staff member of the health clinic reached over and took the knife away from the suspect.
“I just heard a big slam on the counter and I looked over and it was a knife,” said employee Alissa Stewart. “My first instinct was to grab it and get it out of reach.”
Gardner then lunged over the counter, grabbed the knife out of Stewart’s hand and fled, investigators said.
Another clinic employee who had dealt with the boisterous man earlier in the day identified him as Eric Garner.
Police found Gardner walking in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood the following night. They said Gardner, who was carrying a knife, admitted he had “pulled a knife on a Muslim woman earlier in the day because he was ‘doing his part to defend America,’” according to the statement.
One of the points made by the Homeland Security report is that White supremacist groups and lone wolves would be on the rise because of the election of Barack Obama. As we have noted here on Loonwatch, the connection between racism and anti-Muslimism is very strong and when you have one you usually have the other.
In this case, Eric Gardner clearly exemplified the prototype of hate. He hated black people and he hated Muslims. In what seems like a close call, he was scared away when the receptionist snatched the knife off of the counter after he laid it down, he grabbed it out of her hand and in panic ran away. What is even more troubling about this incident is Gardner’s response to the police when he was questioned as to why he did what he did: “doing his part to defend America.”
What’s the psychology that goes into someone’s development to believe that they are defending America by brandishing a weapon at a woman and threatening her and her child? How much influence and inspiration do serious Loons such as Gardner get from the likes of right-wingers such as Michael Savage and Robert Spencer? Individuals who proclaim that America/Western Civilization is under threat by Islam and women who wear a piece of cloth over their heads? These very talking heads and leaders of the Islam-bashing industry proclaim day in and day out that we must “defend America” from the Muslims and Islam, that the barbarian Muslim hordes are out to get you.
Will we hear apologies from these self-appointed “defenders of America” who in effect create an enviornment that heightens such unfortunate incidents as the one in Seattle? At the very least will we hear a condemnation? Most likely, per their track record we wont even see a recognition of such incidents — and that isn’t funny.
