Muslim Woman Beaten Unconscious By Racist Mob In Spanish Capital
20 August 2017A Muslim woman wearing
a headscarf was beaten unconscious by a mob in the Spanish capital, allegedly
as revenge for the Barcelona terror attack, which claimed 14 lives.
According to a report by the Mirror Daily, the attack on the Muslim woman took
place in Madrid's Usera neighborhood.
The 38-year-old Muslim woman was confronted by an angry mob outside the metro
station, who beat her senseless.
The woman is reportedly in the hospital receiving treatment for cuts, bruises
and anxiety attack.
The daily also reported that the Diversity Management Unit of Madrid Police is
treating the incident as a racist attack.
The reports of the attack follow an anti-terror rally held by Spanish Muslims
in Granada, where hundreds took to the streets to urging people to
differentiate between terrorists and ordinary Muslims, who have been subjected
to numerous hate crimes following the terror attack.
A van veered onto a sidewalk and sped down a busy pedestrian zone last week in
Barcelona's picturesque Las Ramblas district, swerving from side to side as it
mowed down tourists and residents and turned the popular European vacation
spot into a bloody killing zone.
Fourteen people were killed and 100 were injured, 15 of them seriously, in
what authorities called a terror attack. The attack was later claimed by Daesh
terror group.
Anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe have increased in the past
few years. The rate of Islamophobic attacks targeting Muslims, mosques and
Islamic community centers have also increased.
Muslims fear anti-Islam backlash in Spain after terror attacks
Prayer time is approaching but Raja Miah, an imam at a tiny mosque in the
heart of Barcelona does not expect a big turnout.
Since the twin attacks in Barcelona and the nearby seaside resort of Cambrils
claimed by Daesh, the Muslim community in central Barcelona's neighbourhood of
Raval fears an anti-Islam backlash.
"People are very scared," said Miah, 23, as he sat in a small room at the
mosque in Raval as a small group of children in an adjoining room studied the
Koran.
Raval -- whose name derives from the Arabic word for the neighbourhood -- is
located just west of Barcelona's bustling Las Ramblas Boulevard where a van
ploughed into pedestrians on Thursday, killing 13 and injuring dozens of
others. Just hours later, another person died in a similar attack in the
holiday town of Cambrils, where police shot five suspects dead.
"There is a lot of fear, people don't go out. Very few people come to pray.
Normally we are about 40 people, last night we weren't even 15 and this
morning 10," said Miah, who moved to Barcelona nine years ago from Bangladesh.
Spain's Muslim community has until now been spared from the Islamophobia that
has swept parts of Europe.
Far-right parties remain barely visible and just four percent of Spaniards
consider immigration to be a problem, according to a survey by the
government's Centre for Sociological Research (CIS).
But the string of attacks in Europe, claimed by Daesh, has sparked a rise in
hate incidents.
The number of recorded cases jumped from just 48 in 2014 to 534 in 2015,
according to a campaign group, the Citizens' Platform Against Islamophobia.
And Muslims fear it will get worse following the twin attacks.
- 'You feel bad' -
The narrow and normally noisy streets of Raval were silent on Saturday
morning.
Immigrants account for roughly half of the densely-populated neighbourhood's
population, with a huge number of people from Bangladesh, Pakistan and
Morocco.
"(The) Spaniards treat us well, they help us, they make us feel at home," said
Raja.
But just minutes after the attack in Barcelona, he said he could feel that
something was changing. When he fled the Ramblas area in the wake of the
attacks he was stopped by police.
"It's normal, they saw me with my beard and robe and they stopped me. But you
feel bad," he said.
"We fear that the same will happen here as in France, Britain or other places"
where far-right parties have grown strongly in recent years, said Islam Zahid,
22, who runs a small supermarket in back streets of Raval. Children could be
heard playing football in the background.
About 100 members of Barcelona's Muslim community, many of them tearful,
gathered on Las Ramblas on Saturday to demonstrate against the twin attacks in
Spain.
"They are not Muslims, they are terrorists" and "Islam is peace," they
shouted.
- 'Barbarians' -
Marzouk Rouj, a 39-year-old Moroccan construction worker who went to the
demonstration with his daughter, said the bloodshed left him "shattered".
"I have lived more years here than in my (own) country. My children go to
school here and I don't want people to look at them negatively because of some
barbarians," said Rouj, who moved to Spain from Nador in northern Morocco when
he was just 16.
Several Muslims left flowers at an impromptu shrine on Las Ramblas.
"In the end Muslims are the main victims, for the deaths as well as for the
social pressure," said Xantal Genovart, vice president of the Association of
Catalan Muslim women.
Catalonia is home to about a quarter of Spain's 1.9 million Muslims -- and it
is also a centre of extremism, according to experts.
Even so, Mounir Benjelloun, president of the Spanish Federation of Islamic
Religious Entities, remains optimistic.
"I think that Spain will know how to handle this and will separate the
culprits from the rest so a xenophobic message does not prosper," he said.
The initial signs are encouraging. A small group of anti-Islam protesters who
turned up at Las Ramblas on Friday were forced to leave after passers-by began
to shout "No racists" at them.
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EsinIslam.Com
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