Home»Identity
569 Islamophobic Attacks in 512 Days

[UPDATED] Hate Crime Watch: 569 Islamophobic Attacks in 512 Days

By

November, 2016

  1. November 1, 2016 – 24-year-old Hussain Saeed Alnahdi, a Saudi student at the University of Wisconsin-Stout in Stout, WI, dies from his injuries after being assaulted after a pizza store.
  1. November 2, 2016 – “F___ ISIS” and “F___ ISLAM” are spray-painted across the sign of the Alumni Center in Boynton Beach, FL.
  1. November 2, 2016 – Head of the hate group the Center for Security Policy, Frank Gaffney, Southern Poverty Law Center-branded “anti-Muslim propagandist” William G. Boykin, fellow notorious Islamophobe Tom Trento of TheUnitedWest(.)org (which calls Islam “the preeminent totalitarian threat of our time”), and former Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-MN) all speak at the Ahavath Torah Congregation in Stoughton, MA, at an event called “National Security Chaos: Are We Passing the Tipping Point?” The group is met with 100 interfaith protestors, but accuses them of being aides to the Muslim Brotherhood and proceeds to spew its age-old conspiracy theories anyway.
  1. November 3, 2016 – The sign for the University of Minnesota’s Muslim Students Association on the Washington Avenue Bridge connecting the two banks of the Minneapolis, MN, campus is vandalized when someone spray-paints “ISIS” on top of its original lettering.
  1. November 3, 2016 – “Deus Vult” is found written on a desk and wall in the student government office at the University of Southern Maine in Portland, ME. The phrase was a battle cry of the Christians in the Crusades, and today is commonly used by white nationalists and other Islamophobic hate groups.
  1. November 5, 2016 – Greene County Sheriff Steve Smith sponsors a seminar at the Piedmont Virginia Community College Campus in Stanardsville, VA, by notorious Islamophobe and conspiracy theorist Chris Gaubatz of the hate group Understanding the Threat. Said one of the attendees, “I was disappointed to see that both speakers totally conflated Muslim and jihadist and indeed the main speaker’s thesis was the there is little daylight between the two.”
  1. November 6, 2016 – In Troy, MI, a 64-year-old man is arrested after he yells ethnic slurs and obscenities and exposes himself to a Muslim woman who happened to be driving behind him while he was jogging, in addition to kicking and banging on her car.
  1. November 6, 2016 – 32-year-old Simran Jeet Singh, a practicing Sikh, is refused water at a volunteer station while running the New York City marathon in New York City, NY, after the woman at the station calls him a dirty Muslim. In an interview, he adds that other incidents also occurred, saying, “There was another moment where a gentleman saw me and told the people in front of me to run faster because ‘that guy from ISIS’ was chasing them.”
  1. November 7, 2016 – “Make America White Again” and a giant swastika are painted on a dugout wall at Quackenbush Field in Wellsville, NY.
  1. November 7, 2016 – Florida Transportation Commission member John Browning posts a photo on Facebook of a Middle Eastern-looking man with a keffiyeh. The caption reads, “Ever want to get off a plane whe (sic) loading. I know that (sic) you mean – is it crazy I leave a store pretty darn quick when I encounter such as this.” He makes another follow up post: “We made it but it didn’t look good all here now.”
  1. November 9, 2016 – Phrases including “Rag Head,” “ISIS,” and “ISIS sympathizer,” are found on 6 different defaced lawn signs for South Brunswick Board of Education member Azra Baig near the South Brunswick High School in South Brunswick, NJ.
  1. November 9, 2016 – A woman is walking in a campus parking garage at San Diego State University in San Diego, CA, when two men begin harassing her “about President-elect Trump and the Muslim community” before they rob her and steal her car keys.
  1. November 9, 2016 – The New York University Muslim Students Association posts on Facebook: “This morning at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering [in Brooklyn, NY], Muslim students found ‘Trump’ scrawled on the door of their prayer room, realizing that our campus is not immune to the bigotry that grips America.”
  1. November 9, 2016 – 19-year-old Esra Altun is walking on the San Jose State University campus in San Jose, CA, when a man chokes her by pulling on her hijab from behind. Police are not investigating it as a hate crime because the man remained silent during the attack.
  1. November 9, 2016 – Journalist Mehreen Kasana of Brooklyn, NY, is wearing a scarf at a train station when someone passes by and tells her, “Your time’s up, girlie.”
  1. November 9, 2016 – A woman has a knife pulled on her by a Trump supporter while on the bus by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in Urbana-Champaign, IL.
  1. November 9, 2016 – 16-year-old Mariam Nomair says a male classmate at El Camino High School in Los Angeles, CA, told her “You shouldn’t be wearing that, you towelhead. You’re not American. This isn’t America. This isn’t what America stands for,” before trying to yank her hijab off.
  1. November 9, 2016 – A Muslim student at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, NM, is screamed at and has her hijab pulled off in the library by a male classmate in a Trump shirt.
  1. November 9, 2016 – A flyer is found on the campus of Utah Valley University in Orem, UT, reading “Donald Trump Won! Now All You Liberal Pussies Better Shut The F___ Up With Your Muslim Rights, Gay Rights, Illegal Immigrant Rights & All That Other Bull S___!” among other rants.
  1. November 9, 2016 – Randy Voepel, a man who says that climate change is a good thing because it “hurts” the “enemies” of the United States, given that “most of the Muslim nations are in the hot areas of the world,” wins his election for California State Assembly after running on the Republican ticket. He is just one of many Islamophobes to win an election this year.
  1. November 9, 2016 – A clerk at the 7-Eleven in Simi Valley, CA, is called “Bin Laden” and told by customers that they’ll “come back to burn him on a cross” after he attempts to stop them from harassing another customer.
  1. November 9, 2016 – High school students at the York County School of Technology in York, PA, are seen on video carrying Trump signs and yelling “white power.”
  1. November 10, 2016 – Racist grafitti including “<3 Trump,” and “ISIS is calling! Muslims leave!” appear in a bathroom stall on the SUNY New Paltz campus in New Paltz, NY.
  1. November 10, 2016 – 19-year-old Fariha Nizam is approached by a couple on a bus in Queens, NY. The woman tells her to “take that disgusting piece of cloth off” her head, and that “it’s not allowed anymore,” before attempting to rip it off by herself.
  1. November 11, 2016 – A Muslim girl is assaulted by a male student at Northdale Middle School in Coon Rapids, MN, and has her hijab pulled off as she and other Muslim students are taunted.
  1. November 11, 2016 – 24-year-old Mairah Teli, a teacher at Dacula High School in Dacula, GA, finds a note on her desk saying “Your head scarf (sic) isn’t allowed anymore. Why don’t you tie it around your neck and hang yourself with it…”. The note also contains crudely drawn American flags and an emphatic “Merica!”
  1. November 11, 2016 – Iranian immigrant Ivet Lolham is speaking in Assyrian on a BART train in San Francisco, CA, when a woman begins yelling at her and tells her, “Trump might deport you.” The other woman then goes on to tell the crowd around her that “This woman is a stalker from the Middle East. She’s a Middle Eastern terrorist, she’s terrorizing citizens like me and she will probably get deported.”
  1. November 11, 2016 – Amar Samel, who is originally from Sudan, comes back from a family gathering following the death of his father to find a note on his door saying “You can all go home now. We don’t want n_____s and terrorists here. #Trump.” He calls 911 and the officer tells him to throw it away; the Iowa City, IA, Interim Police Chief later apologizes for the officer’s “absolutely unacceptable” response.
  1. November 11, 2016 – The CAIR-Dallas-Fort Worth office is surrounded by a circle of pickup trucks and people motorbikes and waving “Three Percenters” flags. The Three Percenters are an openly Islamophobic armed militia group.
  1. November 11, 2016 – Harmann Singh, a 22-year-old Sikh, is “accosted,” called a “f___ing Muslim,” and followed around a store in Cambridge, MA. No one intervenes or helps him.
  1. November 12, 2016 – A CAIR healing space being held at a coffee shop in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, is threatened when a person calls the coffee shop and asks if the “terrorists” are there.
  1. November 12, 2016 – The Owensboro Islamic Center in Owensboro, KY, is vandalized for the second time this year when someone shoots paintballs at the center’s door and sign.
  1. November 12, 2016 – A Muslim woman and her family are harassed at a traffic light in Colombus, OH, when a man yells at them “C___, you don’t belong in this country. Go back to your f____ing country,” takes pictures of the children inside the car, and bangs on the car’s windows.
  1. November 13, 2016 – CAIR-Chicago Executive Director Ahmed Rehab receives a threatening letter at the office in Chicago, IL, that says “Islam is to be feared and resisted…When our next civil war comes, CAIR will be the focus of freedom-loving Americans, which you are NOT…it is QUITE ironic that you claim fear about Trump as president when we have just responded to 8 years of Islamic rule from a half-assed Negro, half-assed Muslim in the White House…[Islam] has always purposed one thing: absolute conquest. It IS the most violent of religions…”.
  1. November 14, 2016 – A 22-year-old woman in Brooklyn, NY, has her hijab yanked off at an intersection when Michail Isakharov yells at her that “Muslims are not supposed to be driving” and charges at her car. He also yells that, “You Muslims don’t drive for a reason! Muslims aren’t allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia! Trump is now president, you guys are gonna be moved out of here sooner or later!” before snatching her phone and smashing it.
  1. November 14, 2016 – Nicki Pancholy returns from a hike in Fremont, CA, to see that her car window has been smashed in and her purse stolen. A note on the dash reads “Hijab-wearing bitch. This is our nation. Get the f___ out.” Pancholy is a non-Muslim; her headscarf is worn as a result of losing her hair to lupus.
  1. November 14, 2016 – President-elect Donald Trump names Executive Chairman of Breitbart and known white supremacist Steve Bannon as his Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor.
  1. November 14, 2016 – A fifth grader at Afton-Lakeland Elementary in Lakeland, MN, brings an air pistol to the school and threatens to shoot a fellow student who is Somali, just days after threatening him verbally.
  1. November 15, 2016 – State Representative Jason Spencer (R) introduces legislation to change Georgia’s “anti-masking law” to include niqabs as well. The law was originally put in place to curtail the actions of the Ku Klux Klan; Spencer eventually withdraws it after being met with widespread anger.
  1. November 15, 2016 – Hijabi students at the University of Washington-Bothell in Bothell, WA, are approached by men on campus and ordered to remove their hijabs.
  1. November 15, 2016 – 18-year-old hijabi Nagro Hassan is hit over the face with a glass bottle at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA.
  1. November 16, 2016 – A math teacher at Monroe High School in Monroe, MI, gives his students an “inappropriate” assignment; CAIR tweets a photo of the alleged assignment, “Top Ten Talents of the Contestants in the Miss Iraq Pageant” – a list which includes “getting plastic explosives through airport security,” “making poison gas out of household cleaners,” and “blowing self up in care in parking lot.” He is put on paid administrative leave pending investigation.
  1. November 16, 2016 – Retired Navy SEAL and pro-Trump super PAC worker Carl Higbie suggests that the Japanese internment camps are a “precedent” in a not exclusively negative way during a conversation with Megyn Kelly on Fox News.
  1. November 16, 2016 – 22-year-old Mohammed Elshamy and his friends are harassed in a Starbucks in Midtown New York City, NY. The lady tells him, “F______ Muslims, go back to where you fucking came from, you’re so ugly,” and calls his veiled friend an “ugly whore.” When Elshamy asks a police officer what can be done, the officer says nothing – the woman was just using her freedom of speech.
  1. November 16, 2016 – A 5-year-old student at David Cox Road Elementary School in Charlotte, NC, is allegedly regularly harassed until today, when his teacher supposedly grabs him by the neck and “began choking him.”
  1. November 16, 2016 – 35-year-old Jennifer Simonetti is getting out of her car in West Brighton, NY, when a man pulls off her scarf (which is not actually a hijab), saying “You can’t wear that s___ no more.” He then proceeds to run his hands up and down her body until she screams, which prompts him and two others who were with him to run away.
  1. November 17, 2016 – In Queens, NY, a Moroccan Uber driver is called a “terrorist” and other profanities by man in an adjacent vehicle. The other driver goes on to say that, “Trump is president, asshole, so you can kiss your f______ visa goodbye, scumbag…We’ll deport you soon, don’t worry, you f______ terrorist. You’re a loser. You’re not even from here, motherf______! F___ you and your family, you terrorist f___!”
  1. November 18, 2016 – President-elect Donald Trump picks retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn to be the National Security Adviser for his administration. Flynn is on the board of directors for the hate group ACT! for America, once tweeted that “fear of Muslims is RATIONAL,” and said that Islam is a “cancer.”
  1. November 18, 2016 – President-elect Donald Trump selects Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) to be his Attorney General. Sessions once made an argument while in the Senate for a religious test to ban Muslim immigration, and was once denied a federal judgeship for being too racist.
  1. November 18, 2016 – President-elect Donald Trump nominates Representative Mike Pompeo (R-Kansas) to be the new Director of the CIA. Pompeo has a history of courting Islamophobes and hate groups such as ACT! for America, and once spoke at a “Defeat Jihad Summit.” He has also said that Muslim Americans who don’t loudly and actively condemn acts of terrorism are “potentially complicit in these acts, and more importantly still, in those that may well follow.”
  1. November 18, 2016 – “Make America White Again” and other racial slurs are graffitied along the Big Papio Trail in Omaha, NE.
  1. November 19, 2016 – 4 white men approach 2 Muslim teens, one of them a 17-year-old from Yemen, sitting on a bench in Queens, NY, and say that they don’t “want any Muslim f___ing” sitting on the bench. The boy is punched in the face, and is left with a fractured eye-socket.
  1. November 20, 2016 – 16-year-old competitive boxer Amaiya Zafar is stopped from competing in the Sugar Bert Boxing National Championships in Kissimmee, FL, because of her hijab. She was previously barred from another competition in 2015.
  1. November 20, 2016 – President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming Chief of Staff and former RNC Chair Reince Priebus says on NBC’S “Meet the Press” that, “I’m not gonna rule out anything, but we’re not gonna have a registry based on a religion.” But, says Priebus, “Clearly, there are some aspects of that faith [Islam] that are problematic and we know them. We’ve seen it.”
  1. November 21, 2016 – The Muslim Association of Puget Sound’s mosque in Redmond, Washington, has its sign smashed.
  1. November 21, 2016 – White Nationalist Richard Spencer speaks at a white nationalist conference to a room of more than 200 people. At one point he yells “Hail Trump!” and is met with Nazi salutes.
  1. November 21, 2016 – Mary Young, who was elected to the Orange County Republican Central Committee and who volunteered for President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign in Orange County, CA, writes in a Facebook post: “I DON’T WANT TO SEE ANY TYPE OF MUSLIMS IN OUR COUNTRY, PERIOD. I DON’T WANT TO HEAR THERE ARE GOOD MUSLIMS…[Muslims] WANT TO TAKE OVER OUR COUNTRY…STOP THE MUSLIM INFLUX!!” She apologizes after deleting the post.
  1. November 22, 2016 – At a Red Robin in Pittsburgh, PA, Jeffrey Burgess tells Ankur Mehta, who is Indian but not Muslim, that, “things are different now,” and “I don’t want you sitting next to me – you people,” in addition to calling him a “sandn____” and “f____ing Muslim” before punching him in the face four times.
  1. November 22, 2016 – 7 books about Islam are defaced with hateful, anti-Muslim messages including swastikas and messages such as “Bulls__ cover to cover” at the Evanston Public Library in Evanston, IL.
  1. November 22, 2016 – Armed 27-year-old Hovsep Avesyan is arrested after he threatens and yells “Go back to Africa” at two Black Muslim women in a parking lot in Upper Darby, PA.
  1. November 23, 2016 – A woman yells, “You’re a terrorist, get out of here” at a hijabi inside Smith’s grocery in Albuquerque, NM. The staff of the store kicked the woman out after she had said “every racist thing you could imagine to say,” according to manager Andrew Castillo, and escorted the Muslim woman to her car to ensure her safety.
  1. November 23, 2016 – An anonymous source sends out fliers across McKinney, TX, reading, “”Our new President Donald J Trump is God’s gift to white nation. We want to get our country back on the right track. We need to get rid of Muslims, Indians, blacks and Jews.”
  1. November 24, 2016 – At least 10 mosques around the country receive a letter reading, “To the Children of Satan – You Muslims are a vile and filthy people…There’s a new sheriff in town — President Donald Trump. He’s going to cleanse America and make it shine again. And, he’s going to start with you Muslims. He’s going to do to you Muslims what Hitler did to the Jews.”
  1. November 25, 2016 – Louvenia Daan and her family are dining at the Peppermill Restaurant in Las Vegas, NV, when a waitress tells her she must remove her hijab or leave, citing safety concerns. The restaurant issues an apology.
  1. November 26, 2016 – A 16-year-old wearing a kufi is shot in the arm while walking home from work in Lakewood, OH.
  1. November 27, 2016 – The Independent American Party of Utah, the third largest political party in Utah, includes in its statement of principles that it wishes to outlaw Islam, which it doesn’t consider a real religion.
  1. November 29, 2016 – Kimelah McKinley finds a flyer at an apartment building in Houston, TX, reading “Attention all Mexicans, Arabs, and non-American ‘people’, this is a warning to leave this alt-left proclaimed property immediately before we remove you.”
  1. November 29, 2016 – Amani Al-Khatahtbeh, the Editor-in-Chief of Muslim Girl, is denied service at the U.S. Post Office at Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan, NY, after on worker told another clerk, “Don’t call on her.” Al-Khatahtbeh is a hijabi, and thought the denial of service is likely discrimination-based.
  1. November 30, 2016 – “Make America White Again” and several swastikas and other racial slurs are spray-painted on the sidewalks of two streets in Mineola, NY.
  1. November 30, 2016 – Asad Khan, the owner of ZaZa Bar and Bites in Galveston, TX, finds bacon fat smeared on the door of his restaurant twice.