Woman wearing hijab has clothes lit on fire
Incident follows several recent hate-related attacks on Muslims in the U.S.
A Muslim woman wearing traditional garments had her clothes set on fire by a man with a lighter as she shopped on a crowded New York City street over the weekend, police said Monday.
The 35-year-old was dressed in a hijab and standing outside a Valentino store on Fifth Ave. in Manhattan Saturday night, when she felt heat on her left side, according to the New York City Police Department. The woman, who has not been identified, saw that her blouse was on fire and patted out the flames. When she looked up, she noticed a man standing with a lighter in his hand, police said.
The incident is the latest in a series of attacks on Muslims and Islamic sites across the U.S. in recent months.
“We are clearly seeing a spike in attacks on individual Muslims and Islamic institutions in New York and around the country, which should be of concern to all Americans,” said Afaf Nasher, director of the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in a statement posted on Facebook. “It is time for the mayor and the NYPD to put forward the necessary resources to investigate and prevent these attacks on the Muslim community.”
Police are investigating the alleged assault as a hate crime. No one has been arrested and no suspects have been identified. NYPD spokesman Christopher Pisano said the woman was visiting the city from another country.
After the attack, the man disappeared down a side street, leaving the startled woman with a “quartersized hole” in her blouse and no injuries, Pisano said.
Two days earlier, a Brooklyn woman allegedly beat two Muslim mothers as they pushed their toddlers in strollers down a busy sidewalk in the borough’s ethnically diverse Bath Beach neighbourhood.
The woman, Emirjeta Xhelili, punched one of the mothers in the face and tried to rip off her hijab while screaming obscenities at them, authorities told the New York Daily News. Xhelili then allegedly tried to grab the other mother’s stroller, which was carrying her 15-monthold child, according to the Daily News. Xhelili, 32, was arrested and charged with hate-crime assault. Xhelili is being held on a $50,000 (U.S.) bond or $25,000 cash bail. Her lawyer told the Daily News she has no prior arrests.
In another attack that has stoked fear in the city’s Muslim community, a Queens man in August allegedly shot and killed an imam and his assistant as they left afternoon prayers in the borough’s Ozone Park neighbourhood.
Alauddin Akonjee and Thara Miah were walking together on a weekend afternoon when a gunman came up behind them and shot them execution-style in their heads, authorities said. Oscar Morel, who is charged with murder, has denied killing the men.
Late Sunday, an arsonist damaged the Florida mosque that was occasionally attended by Orlando nightclub gunman Omar Mateen.
Hamaad Rahman, assistant imam of the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce, said the mosque’s100 members were “saddened and scared” by the fire, which burned for five hours before being extinguished early Monday.
Investigators believe it may have been a hate crime, St. Lucie County sheriff ’s spokesman Maj. David Thompson said.
No one was injured, but the fire burned a three-metre hole in the roof of the mosque’s main building.
A surveillance video from the mosque showed a man on a Harley-Davidson-type motorcycle approaching the building with a bottle of liquid and some papers, then leaving after a flash, Thompson said.
The mosque has been subjected to more threats since June’s shooting than in its previous 20 years of existence, Rahman said.
Since the Orlando shooting, “a lot of people have been driving by hollering and yelling expletives at the church or mosque or whatever they call it,” said Michael Parsons, 22, in front of his parents’ home, directly across the street from the mosque.
In Georgia, officials cancelled a vote on a new mosque scheduled for Tuesday over threatening social media posts.
On Sunday, a self-described militia group, the 111% Security Force, held a protest across the street from the site of a planned mosque and Muslim burial ground, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In August, opponents of the mosque packed a public hearing, with some expressing fears that it would be used to train terrorists.
The Tuesday vote would have allowed the Muslim community in Newton County, 64 kilometres southeast of Atlanta, to go ahead with their plans for the mosque.
Governments “cannot allow extremists to bully, harass or scare them into cancelling public meetings,” the Georgia chapter of the CAIR said after the meeting was called off.