1 in 4 Muslim Women Say They’ve Been Pushed on a Subway While Wearing a Hijab
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A new report published by New York City’s Commission on Human Rights summarizes responses from 3,100 Muslim, Arab, South Asian, Jewish and Sikh New Yorkers, and describes hate motivated incidents between July 2016 and late 2017.
While there are many alarming discoveries outlined in the report, none standout more so than the fact 27 percent of hijab wearing Muslim Arab women reported they had been pushed or shoved on a NYC subway platform.
Significantly, the report ties anti-Muslim rhetoric, which has become a prominent feature of current political discourse, to the spike in hate crimes against Muslims in NYC. The July 2016 to end-2017 timeframe is also significant as it “encapsulates the aftermath of the Republican National Convention” and announcements by the Trump administration to ban immigrants from Muslim majority countries.
The account of Souad Kirama, a Muslim, typifies the kind of discrimination Muslims, particularly Muslim women face on a daily basis. Last year she was physically assaulted at a Brooklyn restaurant by “hate-filled teenage girls” who called her a terrorist.
“People were just standing there watching me being beaten up and being called a (expletive) terrorist,” she said at a press conference. “Never in my life have I seen this kind of violence and aggressiveness.”
Women bear the brunt of anti-Muslim discrimination. One study found that 69% of hijab wearing Muslim women in the United States have experienced at least one incident of anti-Muslim hatred, compared with 29% who did not wear the hijab.
A report compiled by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) identified several contexts in which Muslim women face daily discrimination: at work, school, public places, and by law enforcement:
At work: Muslim women have been denied the right to wear a headscarf while carrying out their place of employment.
At school: Muslim girls who wear headscarves, or whose mothers wear headscarves, have been harassed and assaulted.
In public places: Muslim women and girls have been denied the right to enter public buildings, shopping malls,and swimming pools, and amusement parks unless they submit to being searched by male guards or agree to remove their headcoverings and other garments that they wear for religious reasons.
In law enforcement contexts: Women also have been harassed by police officers for wearing headscarves, both when being arrested and when they have called the police for help.
Violence against Muslim women has become a deeply troubling and standout feature of anti-Muslim discrimination, however. An Australian study found that Muslim women represent 79.6 percent of the Islamophobic attacks recorded, and that one in three female victims were accompanied by their children at the time of the incident.
An estimated 98 percent of attackers were described as ethnically Anglo-Celtic, mostly male: in other words, most Islamophobic attacks are carried out by white men against Muslim women, which exposes the hypocrisy of those who falsely claim Islam is uniquely hostile towards women.
One Muslim Australian told the authors of the study:
“I’m not sure if they started to follow me on foot, but once I entered the medical centre on Pitt Street, I didn’t hear or see anything else from them.
“I am 19 weeks pregnant and have never felt so afraid/vulnerable in my life … I thought they were going to physically try harming my daughter and I. There were lots of passers-by who didn’t come to my aid.”
Last month, I interviewed a young Muslim American woman who was confronted by a Muslim hating bigot at cafe in Southern California, who told me she is confronted by hateful or negative comments about her Islamic dress or faith on a daily basis. She blames negative media portrayals of Muslims and the current anti-Muslim hysteria espoused by the Trump administration for these incidences.
The fact an overwhelming number of anti-Muslim incidences are directed towards Muslim women only emphasizes how Islamophobia, like all forms of hate, is based on the kind of fear and demonization that only cowards find appealing.
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