New York - Hate crimes against Muslims were becoming more and more common - up 67 per cent, according to the FBI.
By Harry Bruinius/ The Christian Science Monitor
Published: Wed 21 Dec 2016, 9:48 AM
Last updated: Wed 21 Dec 2016, 6:47 PM
Three and a half years ago, when Nassrene Elmadhun was 8-1/2 months pregnant with her first child, she never dreamed she would ever go out without wearing hijab.
Since her early teens in Colorado, Dr. Elmadhun has worn a headscarf, both as an expression of her traditional Muslim faith and her commitment to its requirements for public modesty. She wore it throughout her years as a doctor in Boston, where she became the chief surgical resident at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a top trauma center and affiliate of Harvard Medical School.
She was wearing it on April 15, 2013, when her husband texted her. A bomb had exploded near him at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. "I got my scrubs on and waddled into the hospital and did my best to aid the victims," says Elmadhun. "I still have my fleece with 'Boston Strong.' It's something that will be forever burned into my memory."
That day marked a turning point, however.
Instead of second glances, she became the object of angry stares. Instead of folks assuming she's from another country, or expressing surprise, they began to openly associate her with the Tsarnaev brothers, who perpetrated the Boston bombings.
"I was feeling less and less welcome in my own community, and more and more like there was a target on my back."
It was then when Elmadhun made the wrenching personal decision to stop wearing her headscarf.
Read: Muslim woman pushed down stairs in NYC, called 'terrorist'
"You feel fear, it's human nature," says Mariana Aguilera, who converted to Islam 10 years ago, a Brooklyn-based website that celebrates Muslim lifestyles and fashion.
"But this is more than about our fear," says Ms. Aguilera.
Indeed, if Muslim women wearing hijab across the country have been feeling especially vulnerable during the current political climate in which few can recall such open hostility.
It's a theology that is shared by some Orthodox Jewish women, who often wear wigs to cover their heads in public. In some Orthodox Christian, Roman Catholic, and Protestant traditions, too, women are sometimes required to cover their heads in places of worship - a practice common in the United States just decades ago.
Hiding one's faith
"It would be a tragedy to us here in the United States if Muslims felt like they had to hide their faith, if Muslim women felt like they had to take off their hijabs, or Sikh men their turbans, or anyone who felt they could not identify who they are in public," says Imam Omar Suleiman, president of the Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research in Irving, Texas.
"So I think that it's important that we collectively challenge these attacks on people that are identifiably Muslim," he continues.
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Elmadhun and Aguilera point to 2015, when armed protesters were marching in front of mosques and candidate Donald Trump was calling for a ban on all Muslims entering the country. That year, hate crimes against Muslims were becoming more and more common - up 67 per cent, according to the FBI.
Earlier this month, a man at Grand Central Terminal in New York pushed a New York City transit worker down a staircase, yelling "You're a terrorist, go back to your own country!" In Brooklyn, another man threatened an off-duty police officer with his pit bull, also telling her and her son to "go back to your country."
On the steps of a municipal court in New Jersey, too, a man spit in the face of an advocate with the Muslim American Society's Immigrant Justice Center, after she testified in a domestic violence case, according to the Religious News Service.
Self-defense classes
Such incidents led Aguilera, the daughter of a former professional boxer, to organize a self-defense class for women who wear hijab. She and her colleagues expected 50 or so women to respond for a class scheduled after the election. Posted on Facebook by her sponsor, New York's Muslim Community Network, the self-defense class got about 2,700 people expressing interest in a class accommodating 40.
Read: Indian Hindu mistaken for Muslim, beaten up in US club
The attack Monday on the Christmas market in Berlin that killed 12 brings more unease.
"Last year, after the Paris attacks, it was like every time something like that happens, there's the aftermath, and people who have nothing to do with it, we have to take the heat for that," says Aguilera. "And the first people targeted, the most vulnerable, are Muslim women."
In November, police discovered a student at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette lied about having her hijab ripped off. And in New York, a young woman who lied to police and the media, alleging that two white Trump supporters attacked her on the subway, was arrested and charged with filing a false report. In the young woman's court appearance, she was uncovered, and her head had been shaved.
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For Elmadhun, wearing hijab for most of her life was "a positive and powerful message, allowing me to recognize that I am not just what I appear to be.
"I'm sad about what it means about our religious freedoms in general in our country, I'm sad that I had to give it up. I was kind of forced into this. It wasn't really a choice."
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