“Isn’t it ironic that someone writing against hijab can describe it as ‘soaked in blood’ less than a week after a pregnant woman was stabbed to death in Europe by a man who had harassed her for wearing hijab?”
Yusuf Smith replies to Rahila Gupta.
Category Archives: Anti-Muslim violence
Anti-Islamic attacks are not history
Violence against Muslims across Britain and Europe shows we have failed to consign such far-right extremism to the past, argues Inayat Bunglawala.
Man charged with hate crime for threatening Muslim woman
A self-proclaimed white supremacist with a history of threats and harassment was charged under the state’s hate crime statute after he allegedly threatened a young Muslim woman with a knife while she was waiting in line for services at the Seattle Indian Health Board.
According to charging papers, Eric Lee Garner walked up to the woman on July 1, pointed at her head scarf and said, “you Muslim people scare people when you wear things like that!” He followed up with other derogatory remarks.
The woman, who was holding her six-month-old son, tried to reason with the 24-year-old Auburn man by saying that her “her clothing does not make her a bad person,” court documents said. When the insults didn’t stop, prosecutors said, the woman backed away from Garner and tried to shield her son from him.
Garner then cursed at the woman, got in her face and pulled out a large sheathed knife, court papers said. Garner told the woman he was going to “cut” the woman and her baby with the knife, charging documents said.
A health board employee then grabbed the knife and retreated behind the counter, prosecutors said. Garner jumped over the counter, grabbed the knife and ran out of the building.
Update: See “Auburn man sentenced in attack of Muslim woman, baby”, KOMO News, 23 April 2010
The headscarf martyr: murder in German court sparks Egyptian fury
It was while Marwa el-Sherbini was in the dock recalling how the accused had insulted her for wearing the hijab after she asked him to let her son sit on a swing last summer, that the very same man strode across the Dresden courtroom and plunged a knife into her 18 times. Her three-year-old son Mustafa was forced to watch as his mother slumped to the courtroom floor.
Even her husband Elvi Ali Okaz could do nothing as the 28-year-old Russian stock controller who was being sued for insult and abuse took the life of his pregnant wife. As Okaz ran to save her, he too was brought down, shot by a police officer who mistook him for the attacker. He is now in intensive care in a Dresden hospital.
While the horrific incident that took place a week ago tomorrow has attracted little publicity in Europe, and in Germany has focused more on issues of court security than the racist motivation behind the attack, 2,000 miles away in her native Egypt, the 32-year-old pharmacist has been named the “headscarf martyr”.
She has become a national symbol of persecution for a growing number of demonstrators, who have taken to the streets in protest at the perceived growth in Islamophobia in the west. Sherbini’s funeral took place in her native Alexandria on Monday in the presence of thousands of mourners and leading government figures. There are plans to name a street after her.
Unemployed Alex W. from Perm in Russia was found guilty last November of insulting and abusing Sherbini, screaming “terrorist” and “Islamist whore” at her, during the Dresden park encounter. He was fined €780 but had appealed the verdict, which is why he and Sherbini appeared face to face in court again.
Even though he had made his anti-Muslim sentiments clear, there was no heightened security and questions remain as to why he was allowed to bring a knife into the courtroom.
Angry mourners at the funeral in Alexandria accused Germany of racism, shouting slogans such as “Germans are the enemies of God” and Egypt’s head mufti Muhammad Sayyid Tantawy called on the German judiciary to severely punish Alex W.
In Germany the government of Angela Merkel has been sharply criticised for its sluggish response to the country’s first murderous anti-Islamic attack. The general secretaries of both the Central Council of Jews and the Central Council of Muslims, Stephen Kramer and Aiman Mazyek, who on Monday made a joint visit to the bedside of Sherbini’s husband, spoke of the “inexplicably sparse” reactions from both media and politicians.
They said that although there was no question that the attack was racially motivated, the debate in Germany had concentrated more on the issue of the lack of courtroom security. “I think the facts speak for themselves,” Kramer said.
FBI investigating death of Muslim leader
The FBI is investigating the death of a Muslim leader whose body was found inside a burned home in Yermo that had recently been spraypainted with racial epithets and Nazi symbols. Authorities have deemed the June 27 fire suspicious, but said it could take weeks before they are able to determine how the blaze started.
Neighbors who reported the fire told 911 dispatchers they heard a loud boom – almost like an exploding propane tank – just before the fire erupted. When firefighters doused the flames 40 minutes later, they found the body of 51-year-old Imam Ali Mohammed inside the East Yermo Road house he had moved his family out of last month.
Mohammed recently left Yermo for Victorville because he was being harassed, said CAIR spokeswoman Munira Syeda. Coupled with the anti-Muslim graffiti and the fact that Mohammed’s Yermo mosque was torched by arsonists two years ago, CAIR attorney Ameena Qazi asked the FBI to investigate “the possibility of a bias motive in his death.”
Head of Islamic community group in Loughton subject to arson attack
The head of a recently formed Islamic community group has received a threatening letter and had his house targeted by arsonists in an apparently racist campaign against him.
Noor Ramjanally, of Valley Hill, Loughton, said his family had been very shaken by the incidents which started after he hired the Murray Hall, in Borders Lane, for Islamic prayer sessions.
He told the Guardian: “Every Friday we have our prayers and meetings, then we disperse. This Wednesday I received a threatening letter saying: ‘We don’t want you to carry on at this. We know which school your kid goes to and which car you drive.’
“On Thursday they set fire to the front door of my home. They used an accelerant. It’s with the police and they are doing all the checks.
“I’m ok, but my wife and kid are very disturbed. I’ve had to take my kid out of his school. It’s definitely targeted. They don’t want the Islamic community centre in Loughton, I don’t know why.”
Essex Police have confirmed they are investigating both incidents as racially motivated.
Police fear far-right terror attack
Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism command fears that right-wing extremists will stage a deadly terrorist attack in Britain to try to stoke racial tensions, the Guardian has learned. Senior officers say it will be a “spectacular” that is designed to kill. The counter-terrorism unit has redeployed officers to increase its monitoring of the extreme right’s potential to stage attacks.
Commander Shaun Sawyer told a meeting of British Muslims concerned about the danger to their communities that police were responding to the growing threat.
“There is an increased possibility of violence from the far right. There is a trend,” said one senior source, adding that the ideology of the violent right was driven by “people who don’t like immigration, people who don’t like Islam. We’re seeing a resurgence of anti-semitism as well.”
The meeting at which Sawyer spoke was staged by the Muslim Safety Forum, whose chair, Abdurahman Jafar, said: “Muslims are the first line of victims in the extreme right’s campaign of hate and division and they make no secret about that. Statistics show a strong correlation between the rise of racist and Islamophobic hate crime and the ascendancy of the BNP.”
Egypt funeral for stabbing victim
An official funeral has been held for a pregnant Egyptian woman stabbed to death as she prepared to give evidence in a German courtroom.
Several government representatives took part in the funeral for 32-year-old Marwa Sherbini in the northern city of Alexandria on Monday.
Sherbini was stabbed 18 times by a German man of Russian descent, formally identified only as Axel W, last week as she was about to give evidence against him as he appealed against his conviction for calling her a “terrorist” for her wearing the hijab.
Al Jazeera’s Rawyeh Rageh, reporting from Alexandria, said that the case had attracted huge attention in Egypt. “The local council here in Alexandria, the victim’s hometown, has decided to name a street after her and the press is describing her as the ‘Hijab Martyr’,” she said. “At least two protests are expected to take place in Alexandria and Cairo as this is being seen as a xenophobic and Islamophobic attack.”
The German embassy in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, said that the attack was not a reflection of German attitudes towards Muslims. But Sulaiman Wilms, the head of communications at the European Muslim Union, said that the incident was at least partly representative of the situation faced by Muslims across the continent.
“It definitely reflects a certain spillover from certain elements of the public-media discourse, but it also reflects the general violence and degradation of order which we have within European societies in these times of global crisis,” he told Al Jazeera from Cologne. “People are looking for victims and Muslims are sometimes seen as a viable option.”
Islamic charity shop set on fire after repeated threats
The Glasgow branch of Islamic Relief, a worldwide disaster relief charity and member of the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), has been badly damaged after being set on fire in the early hours of Thursday morning.
Commenting on the incident Habib Malik, Head of Islamic Relief Scotland, said:
“This is a huge blow for the local community. Not only is this our Scottish HQ but also our leading charity shop in the country, it is a vibrant hub for the community, with volunteers and donors regularly passing through the doors.
“Unfortunately, earlier this year, during the time of our Gaza Emergency Appeal we received a number of threats of this nature. We are an apolitical charity; we do not take sides in any conflict and simply act to help alleviate people’s suffering. Unfortunately, due to the fact we have the word ‘Islamic’ in our name; we are often an easy target for certain racist and Islamaphobic groups and individuals.
“This despicable incident, which could have easily cost lives, has rightly been condemned by the whole community and by people of all faiths and none. We are genuinely humbled by everyone’s offers of support and we will be working around the clock to get normal service resumed.”
Woman killed in courtroom bloodbath was pregnant
A woman stabbed to death in a Dresden courtroom was three months pregnant, reported German newspaper Bild on Friday.
According to Egyptian newspapers, the woman was Marwa al-Sherbini, a 32-year-old Egyptian national who was suing her attacker after he insulted her for wearing the Islamic headscarf. The attacker, identified only as Alex W., was appealing the €780 fine he was ordered to pay in the libel suit.
Al-Sherbini was the wife of Egyptian academic Elwi Ali-Okaz. He was also hurt in the incident after he tried to help his wife and is in critical condition in hospital. Police are now investigating Alex W. for manslaughter.
Update: See also Islam Online, 5 July 2009