Despite calls from no less figures than President George Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair that the Muslims who may have perpetrated the atrocity should be dissociated from Islam and the general Muslim community which is law- abiding, the reports of hate incidents are on the increase. Sensationalist media speculation and accusations combined with the platform given to marginal agitators who claim to speak for Islam and have applauded the attack on the Twin Towers, are thought to have prompted dozens of incidents reported to The Muslim News. It is estimated that hundreds of people have been the target of Islamophobic hate crimes.<\/h3>\n
The national teacher’s union, NASUWT, has since issued guidance to schools on how to handle this issue sensitively. Many mosques and Islamic organisations have had abusive calls and email \u2013 in Tooting, south London, a graffiti was daubed on the wall of the mosque, \u201cMurdering bastards\u201d. Similar incidents have been reported as far afield as Belfast, Wales and in Scotland.<\/p>\n
Britain\u2019s first state funded Islamic School, Islamia Primary School, Brent, was forced to close, after threatening telephone calls. The School secretary who wears Hijab was verbally abused while out shopping. Two other schools on the site, a secondary school and sixth-form college for girls and in total around 500 were kept at home for two days as were the children of\u00a0Brondesbury College for Boys.
\nIn Southend, Islamophobes went a stage further and actually attacked a mosque.<\/p>\n
The Imam’s daughter, Siddiqah Awan, told The Muslim News, \u201cWe live upstairs and were woken up by the smashing of the windows. We were devastated, that a holy place was desecrated\u201d. Police are investigating. London’s Regent\u2019s Park mosque was evacuated after hoax bomb threats after Asr prayers on September 13. In Oldham and Bolton mosques were also attacked \u2013 Jamia Alavia Islamic Centre in Bolton had 2 or 3 petrol bombs thrown against it as 20 people (including children) inside were praying Isha (evening) prayers.<\/p>\n
More seriously still, there have been serious attacks on individual Muslims and people who look like Muslims (e.g., Sikhs) where violence has been aggravated by Islamophobia. For instance, in the North East, a 20 year old Bangladeshi man suffered a broken jaw after being beaten and kicked by a gang of youths. In Swindon, a woman aged 19 wearing Hijab, was attacked by two unknown white males. No arrests have been made; the police are appealing for witnesses. She believes a metal baseball bat was used to hit her. She was repeatedly hit around the head with a baseball bat. The victim was released from hospital after being treated for bruising . It is being treated as a racially motivated attack and the police are not ruling out the possibility of a link with the incident in the US. Although, the victim believes it is a result of this.<\/p>\n
Most seriously of all, an Afghani taxi driver has been left paralysed from the neck down after an argument over a fare led to a vicious assault where, it is believed, the man\u2019s origin was a factor in aggravating the attack. Police have arrested three men on suspected GBH on Hamidullah Gharwal (28). The incident took place in Twickenham in SW London. Also, an Afghan asylum seeker was assaulted while walking in Dover, Kent.<\/h3>\n
A 20-year-old university student on September 12 at 6pm, in Longsight, Glasgow, was going to her sister\u2019s house by bus. During the journey, a white man sitting behind her said \u201cYou Muslim bastard\u201d and then he hit her over the head with a glass Tizer bottle.<\/p>\n
Nobody came to her rescue; she remained quiet after the incident, as she was too frightened and alighted at her stop. \u201cI was in a daze and didn\u2019t know what to do, the driver didn\u2019t do anything even though he saw what had happened. The bus was full. It is a sad thing that because of anti-Muslim feeling no one came to my rescue,\u201d she told The Muslim News. Attacks have also been reported to The Muslim News from Europe and further afield.<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Friday 27-04-2001 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The speculation about the perpetrators of the atrocities in New York and Washington on September 11, has led to the expected backlash against Muslim… The speculation about the perpetrators of the atrocities...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[274],"class_list":["post-463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-islamophobia","tag-islamophobia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=463"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":465,"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463\/revisions\/465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}