Received via email:
The Florida office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-FL) today called on law enforcement authorities to investigate an assault on a Muslim child at a school in that state as a hate crime. The 12-year-old victim, a student at a middle school in Boyton Beach who wears an Islamic head scarf, says she was assaulted in the hallway of her school last week by four teenage boys who hit her across the face with a leather belt, injuring her lip. During the assault, the boys allegedly called the Muslim child "Osama" and used derogative remarks about her head scarf and about her ethnic background. (The child is of Pakistani heritage.) The perpetrators also threatened further attacks if the victim notified school authorities. The same student told CAIR-FL that she was the target of several similar but less violent incidents of harassment in the recent past. She says school officials failed to take corrective action following those incidents.What is creating this climate where attacking people think they can get away with physically assaulting random Muslims they come across? Maybe it's all this "Islam is evil, Arabs are savages" rhetoric coming from certain parts of the political spectrum. Are you proud of yourselves knowing that a 12 year old girl was assaulted? She was hit across the face with a belt.