As reports of hate crimes and the harassment of Muslims across the country continue to rise, the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy group is calling for a criminal investigation of an apparent hate crime targeting a San Francisco Bay Area woman who is not Muslim.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, is seeking the investigation after the woman -- Nicki Pancholy -- returned from a hike in Fremont’s Mission Peak Regional Preserve on Monday and found someone had smashed a window of her car, stolen her purse and left a note with the scribbling, "Hijab wearing b---- this is our nation now get the f--- out."
Victim was wearing scarf for protection from the sun
The 41-year-old Pancholy believes that someone targeted her car in the mistaken belief that the bandana she was wearing was an Islamic head scarf, or “hijab.” As it turns out Pancholy is not Muslim, but wears a bandana to protect her head from the sun because she suffers from Lupus, a disease, that among other issues, can make a person more sensitive to the sun.
“Californians of all faiths and backgrounds should be free of harassment and intimidation as they go about their daily lives,” Zahra Billoo, the executive director of the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of CAIR, said in a statement condemning the incident. “Local police should investigate this incident as a possible violation of our state’s criminal statutes.”
CAIR, other groups reporting spike in hate incidents
The incident comes as CAIR and other groups are reporting a dramatic increase in incidents targeting Muslims and other minority groups across the country since Donald Trump won the presidential election. The Southern Poverty Law Group says from the day after the election through Monday it had collected 437 reports of hateful intimidation and harassment.
In many of those incidents, according to the group, there were “direct references to the Trump campaign and its slogans.” Also this week, the FBI released a report that showed that hate crimes against Muslims across the country surged 67 percent from 2014 to 2015.
In the Fremont incident, Pancholy tells local television station NBC Bay Area that she was in “shock” when she saw her smashed window and the note.
“That someone would feel so much hate to do this,” she told the station. “I realize this is the climate after the election But I didn’t realize someone would be so ignorant and in so much pain to cause so much harm.”
