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A Timeline of Islamophobic Attacks Against Muslims in the Western World

Islamophobia

Representational Image.’ Photograph: Jacob Sacks-Jones/Alamy Stock Photo

Post the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center, which was allegedly perpetrated by Muslims, the world has grown in hatred for Muslims. This hatred is often referred to as ‘Islamophobia.’

Although Islamophobia existed in premise before the terrorist attacks of September 11, it increased in frequency and notoriety during the past decade. Incidents of Islamophobia have been particularly flourishing in the Western World ever since 9/11. 

The Kashmiriyat has made an effort to collect data from various western nations where Muslims have been attacked, targeted, and even killed due to Islamophobia.

Timeline

On September 15 2001, Waqar Hasan, a 46-year-old Pakistani immigrant, was shot and killed inside of a grocery store in Dallas. Another victim, 28-year-old Raisuddin Bhuiyan was shot in the face while working on a convenience store. He was saved from brain damage but lost sight of one of his eyes. The third victim, Vasudev Patel, 49, was gunned down in Mesquite, Texas on October 4, 2001. The perpetrator said his motive is “to avenge the United States on 9/11.

On September 15, 2005, In Arizona Mesa, Balbir Singh Sodhi, who wore a beard and a turban in accordance with his Sikh faith, was mistaken for an Arab Muslim.

July 12, 2005, In England, A Muslim man, Kamal Raza Butt, was beaten to death outside a corner shop in by a gang of youths who shouted anti-Islamic abuse at him and called him “Taliban.”

March 10, 2006, In the Preston city of England, The Jamia Masjid mosque was attacked by gangs of white youths using brick and concrete blocks. The youths damaged a number of cars outside the mosque and stabbed a 16-year-old Muslim teenager.

January 14, 2007, A 26-year-old man of Yemeni ethnicity was physically assaulted by attackers who used a racist and anti-Muslim epithet during the incident. The victim was thrown to the ground, sustaining a fracture under one eye, a broken nose, and cuts requiring six stitches on his face and staples to the back of his head.

On June 30, 2007, In England’s Blackley, Ghulam Mustafa Naz, a Muslim religious teacher, was stabbed and beaten by four men. Police suggest that it was a hate crime.

July 3, 2007, In Glasgow City of Scotland, A vehicle was driven into a store owned by a Muslim man named Ashfaq Ahmed. The driver attempted to set fire to the vehicle and threw a gas canister into the shop. The massive blast destroyed the store.

3 August 2007, In England’s Bradford, A mosque was seriously damaged in an arson attack.

On 9 August 2007, in London’s England, Assailants attacked the 58-year-old imam of the Central Mosque in Regent’s Park. The victim required emergency surgery on both eyes as a result.

September 16, 2007, Zohreh Assemi, an Iranian-American Muslim owner of a nail salon in Locust Valley, New York, was robbed, beaten, and called a “terrorist” in what authorities called a bias crime.

On February 9, 2008, The Islamic Center in Columbia was firebombed with Molotov cocktails by members of the right-wing extremist Christian Identity Movement.

On 22 August 2008, in England Hastings, Mohammed al-Majed, a 16-year-old student from Qatar, was beaten up outside a kebab shop. He succumbed to his wound 2 days later in hospital.

6 July 2009, In Scotland Glasgow, Scotland, The branch of Islamic Relief was badly damaged by a fire which police said was started deliberately, and which members of the Muslim community of Scotland allege was Islamophobic.

On 8 April 2010, In England Nottingham, Abida Malik and Asif Ahmed were targeted by up to 20 men on a train. The attackers called the couple terrorists.

10 May 2010, In England Babworth, Inmates at Ranby Prison made a bomb intending to kill fellow Muslim prisoners. The inmates threw the bomb in the room where worshippers were in but a prison officer removed it from the facility and disabled it before it went off.

On 9 June 2010, In London, England, A 13-year-old girl was burned and robbed in Grangewood Park by three teenagers who yelled anti-Muslim slurs.

July 2010–March 2011, The Dove World Outreach Center church planned to burn Qur’ans on the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Despite warning from the military leadership in the Afghan War, Terry Jones, the pastor of the centre, said it would be “tragic” if anybody’s life was lost as a result of the planned Quran burning.

On August 25, 2010, A Taxi driver in New York was stabbed after a passenger asked if he was Muslim.

3 December 2010, At England Stoke-on-Trent, a mosque was filled with flammable gas in an attempt to light it on fire. The police classified it as a “deliberate racist attack.”

January 24, 2011, A man was arrested and charged with terrorism after attempting to blow up the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, Michigan, which has large Arab-American and Muslim populations

On December 27, 2012, Sunando Sen, a 46-year-old Indian immigrant, was hit and killed by a subway train when a woman pushed him onto the track. The woman later told authorities that she hates Muslims and “ever since 2001 when they put down the twin towers I’ve been beating them up.

March 16, 2014, A man gunned down Iraqi artist Hassan Alawsi in the parking lot of a Home Depot. Police suspect the shooter was motivated by “his dislike of people of Middle Eastern descent.”

On December 4, 2014, A Muslim Somali-American student at Staley High School was killed near the Kansas City Somali Center, a man intentionally rammed his car into him, knocking him into the air, and then ran over him, nearly severing his legs.

On April 10, 2015, A man spent months gathering weapons and plotting an assault on a Muslim hamlet in northern New York City.

On December 26, 2015, Amrik Singh Bal, a 68-year-old Sikh man, was beaten by someone who called him a “terrorist” assuming him to be a Muslim.

June 29, 2016, A man shot at five Somali-Americans, wounding two of them. Witnesses later recounted that Sawina shouted Anti-Muslim expletives and stated he was going to “going to kill you all.”

July 19, 2016, Suthahar Subburaj, an Indian immigrant, was knocked unconscious outside an Indian restaurant by an assailant who shouted “ISIS… Get out of my country” as he beat him.

August 13, 2016, Maulama Akonjee, a 55-year-old imam, and his assistant, 64-year-old Thara Uddin, was shot and killed while on their way home from Al-Furqan Jame Mosque in Ozone Park, Queens in New York.

August 18, 2016, A Lebanese-American man was shot and killed on his porch in by a neighbour who regularly called him a “dirty Muslim” and “Arab” despite him being Christian.

August 31, 2016, Nazma Khanam, a Bangladeshi woman was fatally stabbed on a Queens sidewalk in New York.

On September 12, 2016, A man set a mosque on fire in fear of another “Manhattan World Trade Center attack or Boston Bombing.

October 11, 2016, Three men monitored apartment blocks which were known to house Muslim refugees, stockpiled an arsenal of weapons, and planned to kill by detonating explosives in four trucks laden with ammonium nitrate.

October 20, 2016, Two mosques were damaged with graffiti swastikas and xenophobic slurs.

On November 10, 2016, Two Muslim women in Brooklyn were attacked while they were walking and pushing their children in strollers. The perpetrator stated “This is the United States of America, you’re not supposed to be different from us” and to demand they leave the country.

November 14, 2016, The Islamic Center of Owensboro has been vandalized for the second time in less than a year.

November 16, 2016, A student was beaten and choked by a teacher, ostensibly due to his religion in North Carolina Charlotte.

On November 25, 2016, A man attacked an Indian man sitting next to him at a bar after mistaking him for a Muslim at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

November 27, 2016, At Virginia Fairfax County, Virginia in the USA, A man was beaten in a parking lot after someone yelled anti-Muslim slurs at him.

December 5, 2016, A Muslim New York City transit worker was pushed down the stairs at Grand Central Terminal by a man who called her a terrorist.

December 10, 2016, A Muslim worshipper was stabbed outside of a mosque. The perpetrator was charged with a hate crime.

December 17, 2016, a sign outside a Redmond mosque in Washington was vandalized for a second time in a month. The sign was first vandalized November 21.

December 18, 2016, A man chucked hot coffee at a Muslim woman, hit her and accused her of being a “terrorist” in a Midtown Dunkin Donuts. He was charged with a hate crime.

January 22, 2017, The windows of the Islamic Center of Davis in California were smashed. Police called it a hate crime.

On January 22, 2017, Burglary and attempted arson took place at a restaurant. Racist and derogatory comments, including the word “terrorist,” were written on the walls directed at the owners, who are Sikh. The episode happened in California Sacramento, California.

January 26, 2017, A man kicked a Muslim airline worker and told her “Trump is here now” and “he will get rid of all of you.”

February 1, 2017, Members of Roseville’s Tarbiya Institute arrived Wednesday morning to find a dozen different racial epithets spray-painted on the building’s front and back.

February 11, 2017, In Columbus, Ohio, An Islamic Center was vandalized with graffiti that read “Allah is a fraud.”

February 23, 2017, A man shot and killed an Indian immigrant engineer he thought was Middle Eastern and wounded two others after shouting “get out of my country” and opening fire.

March 4, 2017, In Washington, A man shot and injured a Sikh after shouting “get out of my country.”

March 10, 2017, At Oregon, A man beat an Arab employee of Al Aqsa Restaurant with a pipe, yelling “go back to your country terrorist” and “get out of America”

On March 12, 2017, A Florida man who attempted to set fire to a convenience store told deputies that he assumed the owner was Muslim and that he wanted to “run the Arabs out of our country.” The sheriff later said the store owners are actually Indian.

March 26, 2017 Yosef Steynovitz was charged with assault with significant bodily injury, which is a felony, in connection with the beating of Kamal Nayfeh, a 55-year old Palestinian-American instructor at a community college in Charlotte, North Carolina.

April 11, 2017, A woman was beaten and stabbed by a man. Munjed Ahmad of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee concluded that “Nothing was stolen. There was no robbery. Her valuables remain with her. The only motive we can think of—because everything stayed with her and this individual went straight for her scarf is a hate crime.”[321] Unnamed man.

May 26, 2017, In Oregon, A man fatally stabbed two people and injured a third on a MAX Light Rail train, after he was confronted for reportedly “yelling a gamut of anti-Muslim and anti-everything slurs.”

August 5, 2017, Bomb detonated in the Dar Al-Farooq Islamic Center in Bloomington.

September 13, 2017, An Orthodox Jewish woman and her daughter were allegedly beaten up at a Queens subway station by a drunk who mistook them for Muslims.

On September 19, 2017, In Illinois, Five football players at a private U.S. Christian college were charged in connection with a hazing incident that allegedly included anti-Muslim taunts and left a student with injuries requiring surgeries.

September 20, 2017, A Muslim woman in Leicester, England suffered serious injuries after being struck by a car. Police allege that it was a hate crime and was with intentions of killing the woman. 

On September 24, 2017, Nasser Kurdy, a 58-year-old Muslim man was stabbed as he arrived at the Islamic Cultural Centre on Grove Lane,  Altrincham, England. After Nasser was out of the hospital, he had decided to forgive his attackers as he stated that they were “not representative of what this country stands for”

October 1, 2017, During “The Call to Prayers (Adhaan)” in an opening season performance in Cluj Napoca, Romania, a group of members from the far-right ultranationalist party in shouted “no mosque should be built on Romanian lands” or “Prayers in Arabic language used by Muslim terrorists shan’t be used in a cultural institution”.

July 2, 2018, In Anderlues, Belgium, two men beat and slashed the upper body of a Muslim girl wearing a headscarf. 

June 23, 2018, 10 people from a far-right group in Island of Corsica, France, were arrested for suspicion of involvement in a terrorist plot that targeted to attack imams, Islamist prison inmates who had been released, and veiled women chosen at random.

July 17, 2018, A man fired six shots at a female employee wearing a headscarf in a Turkish-owned bakery, in Heilbronn, Baden- Württemberg, west Germany. The employee was not injured but the attacker was arrested for racial motives behind his attack. 

On October 25, 2018, A Syrian refugee at Almondbury Community School in Almondbury, Huddersfield, England was assaulted. The 15-year-old refugee boy was dragged by his neck before being “waterboarded” by a 16-year-old boy. 

March 15, 2019, 51  Muslims killed and 50 seriously injured after, Brenton Harrsion Tarrant, a self-proclaimed “Kebab removalist” from Australia committed two consecutive terrorist attacks at  Al Noor Mosque and Linwood Islamic Centre in Christchurch, New Zealand. 

March 16, 2019, In Brisbane, Australia, a day after Christchurch mosque shootings, a man rammed his car into the gates of a Queensland mosque and shouted offensive words to worshippers inside.

March 16, 2019, A man went on a rampage armed with a baseball bat and knife, shouting Islamophobic remarks, and injuring one 19-year-old male. The man shouted, “kill a Muslim” before carrying out the attack.

March 24, 2019, In Escondido, California, a man set fire to a mosque. Police discovered graffiti on the mosque’s driveway referencing the Christchurch mosque shooter, leading them to consider the fire a terrorist attack

April 2, 2019, A girl was assaulted, kicked in the back of the head, exposed to fist bumps, her headscarf pulled of while the offender among other things shouted xenophobic slurs at her. 

April 23, 2019, Isaiah Joel Peoples while on his way to a Bible Study Group in Sunnyvale, California, ran his car into a group of people assuming that they were Muslims and repeatedly said “Thank you Jesus” after crashing into them. A 7th-grade Indian origin girl, Dhriti Narayan, who was a victim of the attack is in a coma. 

On April 29, 2019, Rasmus Paludan, like many times once again burned copies of the Quran in Copenhagen, Denmark.

May 31, 2019, In Bremen, a 27-year-old man stabbed a 16-year old Muslim boy in the neck after making anti-Muslim comments towards him and his friend

August 10, 2019, A 21-year-old Norwegian man was accused of a terrorist act in connection with a gun attack on Bærum Mosque mosque in Bærum, Norway. 

 September 11, 2019, The outer walls of Brisbane mosque in Brisbane, Australia, were sprayed with the name of the Christchurch shooter and phrase from a Serbian anti-Muslim song.

September 10, 2019, During an Ashura parade in Copenhagen, Denmark, a man drove a bus into a crowd of Muslims. No one was injured in the attack. However, the man was arrested and charged with violence.

November 20, 2019, A man yelling anti-Islamic hate speech punched and stomped a pregnant Muslim woman wearing a hijab in Sydney, Australia.

October 28, 2019, A 84-year old former candidate for the France National Rally attacked the France Bayonne mosque and seriously injured two people by gunfire.

On January 23, 2020, A person vandalized a mosque in Copenhagen, Denmark, he/she wrote on the walls “Muslims, Islam  Cancer”.

February 19, 2020, Two Shisha bars in Hanaunine, Hesse, Germany, were attacked by a far-right extremist. 9 people were killed and 5 others wounded in the terrorist shooting spree.

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