In the latest in a spate of anti-Muslim incidents over the last two days, an intoxicated man entered a mosque in Queens on Wednesday evening and proceeded to urinate on prayer rugs, New York police officials said.
The man, identified as Omar Rivera, reportedly shouted anti-Muslim epithets and called worshippers who had gathered for evening prayer “terrorists.” One witness told the New York Post the man was “very clearly intoxicated” and had a beer bottle in his hand at the time.
“He stuck up his middle finger and cursed at everyone,” Mustapha Sadouki, who was at the mosque at the time, said. “He calls us terrorists, yet he comes into our mosque and terrorizes other people.”
Rivera has been charged with criminal trespassing.
FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko told msnbc.com that New York City has not seen a change in the number of hate crimes reported by Muslims so far this year, but every report is taken seriously.
But recent incidents — including the and the desecration of a California mosque — have some members of the Muslim community worried that crimes against Muslims could reach crisis levels.
"Without a significant response by mainstream political leaders, this disturbing trend will only continue to grow," said Faiza Ali, a New York spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Start of a bigger trend?
Around 6 p.m. Tuesday evening, a drunk 21-year-old student named Michael Enright allegedly attacked a cab driver in midtown Manhattan who had identified himself as a Muslim.
The cab driver told police that the two struck up a conversation in Arabic before Enright turned on him, screaming “This is a checkpoint, mother----er! I have to put you down.” Enright reportedly proceeded to stab the driver’s neck and face with a Leatherman knife.
Earlier this week, a mosque in Madera, Calif., had been vandalized with signs referring to the controversial plan to build an Islamic community center two blocks from the site of the September 11 terrorist attacks, according to CAIR.
“No temple for the God of terrorism at Ground Zero,” one sign read. “Wake up America, the Enemy is here,” read another. Both were signed “ANB,” reportedly standing for the American Nationalist Brotherhood.
Imbrahim Hooper, another spokesman for CAIR, told msnbc.com that it is only after “times of severe crisis” like the Oklahoma City bombing or September 11 terrorist attacks that the organization has seen such an uptick in hate crimes against the Muslim community.
“I think we’re beginning to see the result of this manufactured controversy about the Islamic community center in Manhattan,” Hooper said. “I hope this is not an indication of a trend.”
Hooper said the organization attributes the increasing number of incidents involving anti-Muslim rhetoric to an “Islamaphobia machine” that includes right-wing news, blogs and other media outlets.
When asked to specify exactly what media outlets are to blame, Hooper responded, “We don’t need more enemies right now.”
According to the organization’s most recent Civil Rights Report, New York is among the five locations in the United States with the highest number of CAIR civil rights complaints. Most of these complaints, moreover, are made as a result of occurrences in a Muslim location or mosque.
Hate crimes represent a very small number of the overall complaints filed by CAIR since it first began recording data on Muslim civil rights in 1995.
Since 2004, the percentage of complaints that were classified as “hate crime” has been on the steady decline, according to the report.
