My friend Anji M. tips me off to a possible hate crime on the Baylor campus down in Texas. Many of the news reports seem to highlight (sometimes multiple times in the same article) that the senior was involved with Muslim-Christian dialog on campus.
A Muslim Baylor University senior of South Asian heritage who was active in Muslim-Christian relations was attacked on the school’s campus Saturday night, suffering multiple injuries.
Chief Jim Doak of the Baylor Department of Public Safety confirmed that police were alerted about the attack and that the incident is being investigated, but he refused to release further details. Neither Doak nor a university spokeswoman could immediately say whether the alleged attack will be investigated as a hate crime.
The Baylor DPS web site indicated that the attack occurred near Draper Hall between 8:45 and 9 p.m.
Rabiah Ahmed, a spokeswoman for the Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said the victim called them Monday and said a man, thought to be in his 30s, grabbed her hijab, an Islamic head scarf, and threw the woman to the ground. As he did, the attacker allegedly yelled anti-Muslim and ethnic slurs at the woman including “Arabian (expletive)” and “(expletive) Muslims.”
When the woman screamed, her attacker reportedly slapped her and kicked her multiple times in the ribs, according to Ahmed. An emergency room examination found bruises and a dislocated shoulder, Ahmed said.
The victim, who was active in Muslim-Christian relations on the Baylor campus, went to her family home in Oklahoma after the attack. Ahmed said she was told the victim would stay home for about a week. [Link]
Here is another account with additional details. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) got in touch with the FBI soon after word of the incident surfaced. The FBI agreed to send someone down:
“We have had an FBI representative on campus with us throughout the day today and will continue to work with the agency as this process goes forward,” Doak said.
The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic relations called on the FBI Tuesday to probe the attack on the coed as a hate crime. [Link]
We’ll try to keep readers updated when additional details emerge.
Horrible!
🙁 that’s horrible.
It’s from the Baylor website, so I have no idea whether to take it at face value or not.
That’s so horrible .. definitely keep us updated on this.
Kind of ironic that CAIR is now going to the FBI… it wasn’t too long along that the FBI arrested Bassem Khafagi, CAIR’s director of community relations on terrorism related charges.
I see how it is on Sepia Mutiny. When the story is about a Muslim being victimized, there’s no concerned response. When it’s about something negative, how many responses? I’ll let you answer that on your own.
aint2proud2beg, Instead of “seeing it how it is” why don’t YOU leave an informed and concerned response? You can’t always wait for someone else to fight the good fight. You step up and do it yourself.
Update: A friend of a Muslim student allegedly attacked at Baylor University says the attack was a hate crime.
Nohia Javed told investigators she was physically attacked Saturday night as she walked to her dorm outside the Draper academic building just before 9 p.m.
“As soon as he approached her he came-up to her from behind and he said you Arabian b, the whole time he was attacking her he was like you Muslim this middle eastern that. I mean just cussing her out. The sad thing is Nohia is not even Arab she’s Pakistani,” the victimÂ’s friend Huda Said says.
Martin Luther King Jr. said: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Well, I am commenting on this now! I’m Bangladeshi-American and non-religious, but have always grown up around people different from me, mainly white and Mexican-American. People need to be exposed to the “other” and see people as people, not as groups. Just b/c some conflict/war/or some bad thing is happening in one’s life, NO ONE has the right to hurt another person in this way!!! I sometimes DO worry for people, even here in NYC, who wear their religion “on their sleeve” b/c American society is STILL PRETTY STUPID AS A WHOLE!!!
—EMMA
Why do people say “South Asian” so much in newstories? Why can’t they just tell me exactly from where people hail?
There’s a $5000 award for information leading to arrest and conviction.
Isn’t South Asia a place? Or do you want her great-great-grandfather’s village?
No, and India isn’t in South Asia either, it hovers above the map in an alternate dimension. </sarcasm>
eyes wide active in promoting Muslim-Christian relations, attending Baylor, and from Oklahoma?
I bet I know her…and my gut just twists. The desi community when I was growing up in Oklahoma was fairly tight knit (it’s more splintered these days)…I hope she’s OK.
it hovers above the map in an alternate dimension.
It’s all that yogic levitation, Manish! 😀
Salam
I am very sad to see this girl in pain. and what is sad more that i know her and just 2 weeks before this attack i saw her at a party beatiful in her hijab and pakistanu cloths. its just sad to know that any thing can happen in a sec
I was surfing the net and came upon your info. I am mexican american and was in the march this past weekend in tucson arizona, a “border guardian” was burning the mexican flag right in the middle of the protest and the police did nothing to stop the group , but the minute some mexican american students protested by throwing water at the flag to stop the fire they were pounded upon by the police in total 6 mexican american citizens were arrested and none of the guardians. In the end the reporters decided to press charges against the gaurdians for physically assaulting them. The human rights coalition is investigating to see if charges can be brought upon the officers who actually hit 14 and 15 year old girls in the scuffle that ensued. “Hasta la Victoria” Che Guevarra.