Muslim girl details students' taunts, attack [View All]

[JohnLocke]

Muslim girl details student taunts, attack
By Lona O'Connor -- The Palm Beach Post
Saturday, April 17, 2004
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DAVIE (FL) -- A 12-year-old Pakistani girl faced the news media on Friday for the first time, recounting an attack that has been described as a hate crime against her.
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During the news conference, she wore a black hijab, a scarf that Muslim women and girls wear to cover their hair in public. She described how a group of boys approached her on April 5 after school as she was about to head home from Congress Middle School. They pulled the hijab off her hair, then struck her with a belt buckle in the lip. She said they told her not to tell anyone, then ran away.
Since transferring to Congress Middle in March, she said, she has been the target of a series of incidents that started with questions and staring, but soon escalated to insults and culminated in the belt attack.
Shortly after she began attending Congress, students crowded around her and on more than one occasion asked why she wore the hijab and where she came from, she said. When she told them she was from Pakistan, they said, "Osama country." The reference was to Osama bin Laden, leader of the terrorist group Al-Qaeda, who was born in Saudi Arabia.
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The girl, whose family refused to give her name for her safety, was accompanied to the news conference by her mother and an uncle, Shabbir Khoja. The uncle said she called him, crying, on the day of the belt incident. Khoja said the family informed Congress Middle officials the next day.
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Asked whether the incidents have affected her feelings about the United States, she answered, "This is a good country, but not for me."
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