The number of reported cases of discrimination against Muslims is on the rise across the United States, with religious discrimination cases sprouting up in states from Oregon and Illinois to Ohio and New Jersey.
Discrimination against Muslims has come in the form of verbal and physical threats to instances of desecration of the Qoran and hate mail.
In Tulsa, Oklahoma, a 33-year-old man was charged with a hate crime last month after he allegedly sent an intimidating letter to the Islamic Peace Academy and posted a video on the Internet showing him desecrating a Qoran. Jesse Quinn Harrison was charged December 28 with one count of transmitting a threatening letter and one count of malicious intimidation or harassment.
Harrison is accused of sending a letter to the Islamic Peace Academy in Tulsa "with the intent to intimidate." He also made a video that shows him "smearing pork on the Qoran and an Islamic religious figure and grilling those items," according to the charge.
In southern Idaho a man was charged with felony harassment after he reportedly threatened a Muslim woman at the Twin Falls Walmart December 22. John Christopher Larsen, 42, was charged after witnesses told police they heard Larsen yelling at the woman and her two children. Larsen reportedly told the woman, who was dressed in traditional Muslim garb, that Muslims don't belong in the United States, and then threatened her with a gun he had concealed under his shirt.
Larsen reportedly told her he spent two-and-a-half years in Iraq and said "my friends were killed by you; I was blown up by you." According to court records, Larsen also reportedly told the woman he had killed lots of Muslims and planned to kill more.
Another Muslim woman was the victim of an attack in Ohio late last month. Saida J. Said said a man sprayed her in the face with pepper spray while yelling racial and religious slurs. Said, a 20-year-old Somali native who has lived in central Ohio for more than a decade, met with FBI officials in Columbus after the December 20 incident. Said, who wears a traditional Muslim niqab, a veil in which only a thin slit exposes the eyes, said she was stopped in her car at an intersection in the early afternoon when she noticed a man in an SUV was watching her.
The man followed her to a bank and then into the parking lot outside the Abubakar Siddique Islamic Center, after which he got out of his car and pepper-sprayed Said through her car's side window, yelled racial and religious slurs and then drove off, according to Said. "He wanted to hurt me," she told the Columbus Dispatch. "He didn't care who I was. He just cared that I was Muslim. He said, 'All you Muslims go back to where you came from.'" The incident was caught on the mosque's surveillance camera.
Such crimes are initially listed as an assault in the state, but a trial would determine whether it was a hate crime under Ohio law, said Sgt. Rich Weiner, a Columbus police spokesman. The FBI has now begun a civil rights investigation into the incident to determine whether federal hate-crime charges should be filed, said FBI spokesman Mike Brooks of the Cincinnati field office.
Also in Ohio, a mosque was targeted by anti-Muslim bigots in mid-December. The Clifton mosque received a threatening email saying in part, "You should know that you are not wanted in Cincinnati. We don't want you here. Mohammad is a joke. Go back to your desert. Beware. We may just declare jihad on you." A mosque in Detroit was also targeted with hate mail. One letter sent to the mosque read: "99.999 percent of terrorists are Muslim." In addition, a Qoran that had been smeared with feces was delivered to the mosque.
In Chicago, a man filed two lawsuits December 30 against the Forest Preserve District of Cook County reporting that his wife had been denied access to the Cermak Family Aquatic Center in 2009 because she was wearing traditional Muslim dress.
Mahmoud Yaqub went to the aquatic center, which has a wading area, fountains and sprinklers, with his wife and two children on August 16, 2009, according to the lawsuits. Yaqub alleged his wife was denied access to the park because she was dressed in hejab, despite the fact that he told the cashier that neither he nor his wife was planning to swim.
The Washington state chapter of the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR) sent a letter to the FBI asking for an investigation into a Gresham, Oregon, man's reported verbal threats and physical intimidation against his newly converted Muslim neighbor. On December 10, the victim was granted a temporary stalking protective order against the accused perpetrator. According to court documents, the series of threats began in early November when the suspect reportedly pushed the alleged victim, trapping her against a wall in their apartment complex's laundry room.
Two weeks later, the man allegedly threatened to shoot her dog and rape her "while you pray with your head on the ground." He also reportedly confronted her in the parking lot and threatened to kill her.
The woman expressed further concern that while police helped her, they did not respond quickly enough and instead urged her to consider not wearing her headscarf to avoid angering the suspect.
"After countless calls to the police, and a stalking order, the police claim the perpetrator is a 'nice guy,' and have failed to arrest him," Arsalan Bukhari, the executive director of the Washington chapter of CAIR, wrote in his letter to the FBI.
"Even after obtaining her stalking order, strangers have been approaching her door to try to get in her apartment and strangers have been calling her daughter and yelling profanities over the phone. The police department has begun to transfer 911 calls from the victim's daughter's cell phone automatically to non-emergency, despite that an emergency still exists."
Gresham police Capt. Dale Cummins said the Bureau of Emergency Communications receives and routes 911 calls, not the local police department.
Department management found out about the woman's concerns on December 6 and assigned the case to a detective on December 8. The detective met with the woman the next day and encouraged her to file an anti-stalking order, which she did. Although the order was granted, it wasn't served on the suspect until December 16 because Multnomah County sheriff's deputies were unable to contact him at home.
In New Jersey, a Muslim father said he's being denied custody of his son based on the fact that he is Muslim. At a December 21 news conference, Muhammed Khalil told reporters that a Division of Youth and Family Services worker berated him with insults at a public restaurant.
The Egyptian native, who is also a green-card holder, said the case worker asked him, "Where is your bomb strapped on you?" Another Muslim woman, Sandy Dahmra, who was with Khalil at the restaurant, was allegedly told, "Go back to your country."
Both Khalil and Dahmra said they had other comments directed toward them including "terrorist," "Bin Laden lover" and "why don't you call your Allah."
The family service worker also reportedly told Khalil that he would never get his boy back; Khalil has not seen his 6-year-old son since the boy was taken from his mother's home a year ago and placed with foster parents. Due to privacy laws, it is not publicly known why the boy was placed in foster care. Khalil and his son's mother are separated.
