569 Islamophobic Attacks in 512 Days

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

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January, 2016

  1. January 1, 2016 – The Islamic Society of Central Florida in Titusville, FL, is vandalized after a man carrying a machete enters the mosque and smashes cameras, lights, and windows, in addition to leaving bacon by the mosque’s door.
  1. January 1, 2016 – A truck for the Zamzam Halal International Market and Deli in Denver, CO, is set on fire following a previous arson attack.
  1. January 1, 2016 – Just two weeks after another Sikh is attacked in the same city, 68-year-old Gurcharan Singh Gill is stabbed to death while working at Shields Express Mart in Fresno, CA.
  1. January 8, 2016 – Rose Hamid, a hijabi, wears a shirt that simply says “Salam I Come In Peace” and a yellow star that says “Muslim” in silent protest at a Trump 2016 rally in Rock Hill, SC, when she is booed and removed with several other protesters by police. Hamid describes how the crowd jeers at her, with one person even yelling “You have a bomb, you have a bomb!” in her direction.
  1. January 9, 2016 – While Muslim employees at Ariens based out of Green Bay, WI, used to have two five-minute breaks for prayer, the company owners change the policy and said that Muslims would instead have to pray during their ill-timed lunch breaks. When employees complain, they are handed unemployment papers. 53 employees are affected; about 40 of them lose their jobs later entirely.
  1. January 9 & 10, 2016 – The editor of American Renaissance – a white supremacist magazine – Jared Taylor robocalls Iowa voters to advance Presidential-hopeful Donald Trump’s suggestion that Muslims be banned from entering the U.S.
  1. January 10, 2016 – Assistant Professor of Speech Communication at Broward College in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, Muhammad Zakar Khan, attempts to sign up for an Epic Games account, but cannot create an account because “Your account creation has been blocked as a result of a match against the Specially Designated Nationals list maintained by the United States of America’s Office of Foreign Assets control,” according to the site.
  1. January 10, 2016 – Red markings are left on the Islamic Center of Owensboro, KY, which turn out to be smeared ketchup. Despite the clear vandalism, officials refuse to examine it as a potential hate crime due to the fact that there were no symbols or words left behind.
  1. January 13, 2016 – The Islamic Center of Wheaton, IL, is targeted by hackers who create a fake website that promotes violence, radicalism, and support for ISIS, in the name of the center. The site is eventually taken down, and the FBI are investigating. However, the potential gunman is still on the loose.
  1. January 13, 2016 – An email with the subject-line “Bomb” is sent to more than 600 students, past and present, at Washington Latin Public Charter School in Washington, D.C. from a Muslims student’s account. It is discovered that two senior boys at the school had hacked into the students’ email; they are subsequently expelled.
  1. January 13, 2016 – A Facebook user threatens to set fire to local mosques in Sunrise, FL.
  1. January 13, 2016 – The Islamic Center of Omaha, NE, is targeted for the fourth time in the past 5 months when two masked men wrap bacon around the handle of the mosque’s doors around at 3:30am. They attempt to break the glass doors by throwing rocks, but are unsuccessful.
  1. January 14, 2016 – Residents of Bayonne, NJ, protest plans for a Muslim community center at City Hall with signs such as “If the mosque comes, the mayor goes,” and “No mas, no mosque.” Fliers advertising the protest included the word “Remember” next to an image recalling September 11th. Organizers claim around 100 people are on their side.
  1. January 16, 2016 – Dr. Mehreen Faruqi, a member of the Australian parliament, is questioned for an hour at Los Angeles International Airport on her way back from visiting relatives in California and participating in a self-funded research trip regarding drug law reform. She is separated from her husband, and repeatedly asked how she “actually got” her Australian passport.
  1. January 18, 2016 – Four men – two Bangladeshi Muslims, one Arab Muslim, and one Indian Sikh – file a lawsuit against American Airlines after they were kicked off a flight from Toronto, Canada, to New York City, NY, earlier in December for “looking too Muslim.” Two more members of their group of old friends, a Hispanic man and a Pakistani man, were sitting separately, and were not pulled off.
  1. January 18, 2016 – A man is removed from a flight from Orlando, FL, to New York City, NY, after Delta Airlines says he refuses to stop using his phone. However, a fellow passenger live-tweeting the entire episode says that another woman on the flight alerted the flight-attendant after becoming anxious while watching the ejected passenger eat hummus. Two other passengers are also removed; nothing is known about them except that one was able to board a later flight.
  1. January 18, 2016 – A Bangladeshi man wearing traditional attire walking through his neighborhood in the Bronx, NY, with his 9-year-old niece is brutally punched until he falls and is kicked on the ground while his teenage attackers yell “ISIS! ISIS!”
  1. January 19, 2016 – 34-year-old Amine Aouam, a Philadelphia man of Moroccan descent, is talking to one of his friends in Arabic when a woman begins staring at him. After greeting her in Arabic, he is attacked by her friends, who sucker-punch him and knock him unconscious while yelling at him.
  1. January 19, 2016 – Members of the Christian Civil Liberties Union in South Milwaukee, WI, protest a Common Council meeting in an effort to stop the building of a mosque. Protester Bob Braun claims, “There’s going to be, I predict, bloodshed one of these years coming up.”
  1. January 20, 2016 – The Islamic Center of Tucson, AZ, has its parking lot littered with glass shards and broken bottles thrown from the roofs of high-rise buildings nearby, three times in one week. Ice, eggs, and trash, have also been thrown from the student housing complexes.
  1. January 20, 2016 – Tennessee Assemblymen Matthew Hill, Timothy Hill and Micah Van Huss introduce the bill as unalterable and made to “officially stop Islamic religious indoctrination in Tennessee schools.”
  1. January 24, 2016 – A stack of books is lit on fire in a vacant lot set to be the site of a new mosque in Daytona Beach, FL. While officials claim it’s possible the fire was simply started by a group of homeless people trying to stay warm, no one has been charged, and damages total around $5,000.
  1. January 26, 2016 – A woman who prefers to go by simply “Anasie” for security reasons is at a West Bloomfield Township, MI, meeting with the board of trustees over how to keep the city “welcoming” in advance for immigrants. Hundreds of people attend the meeting in protest, calling her a “terrorist, a rapist, a murderer, and booed, and the worst part is that about 90% of the people cheered.”
  1. January 26, 2016 – Dr. Jeffrey Bauman of St. Cloud, MN, hosts “Shariah 101,” an event dedicated to discussing the dangers of creeping shariah in the United States post 9/11. State Senator David Brown (R) attends the classically Islamophobic event.
  1. January 27, 2016 – Members of the California State University Muslim Student Association in Sacramento, CA, come back from class to see a hateful message left on one of their sign-up sheets.
  1. January 27, 2016 – A South Carolina State Senate committee sends a bill to the Senate floor requiring police to track refugees in the state, creating an online refugee address registry, and holding the sponsors of refugees who commit terrorism equally responsible for the act should it occur.
  1. January 28, 2016 – Despite there being no precedent for attorneys actually claiming sharia law as a defense in any court cases in the state, South Carolina’s House of Representatives passes a bill banning just that.
  1. January 28, 2016 – At the Republican Presidential Debate in Des Moines, IA, moderator and Fox News host Megyn Kelley pushes Presidential-hopeful Chris Christie of New Jersey to say that seeing Muslims in your neighborhood is enough to warrant calling the police.
  1. January 29, 2016 – At a campaign stop at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, IA, Presidential-hopeful Ben Carson claims that Islam is “not a religion,” and that it has an “apocalyptic vision,” before he proceeds to equate Islam and ISIS.