National and local Muslim civil rights and advocacy groups are calling for Milwaukee police to investigate as a hate crime an attack on a Muslim woman who says a man demanded she remove her hijab and beat her.
“You can’t get a clearer hate crime than this,” said Janan Najeeb, president of the Milwaukee Muslim Women’s Coalition.
“This was not a robbery,” Najeeb said Wednesday. “There was an individual telling her to take her scarf off, ripped it off and started beating her up. This is clearly a hate crime.”
The woman, who has not been publicly identified, told a local TV station she was walking near S. 13th St. and W. Layton Ave. about 6 a.m. Monday when a car pulled alongside her and a man got out, demanding she take off her hijab, or head scarf.
The woman tried to fight him and “he threw me on the floor, then he beat me like an animal,” the woman told WITI-TV (Channel 6). The man drew a knife and slashed at her clothing, said the woman, who showed the cameras her bloodstained head scarf.
After the woman got home, she suffered a seizure and went to the hospital. She was released Tuesday.
