Muslim woman traumatized after being called terrorist during vicious attack

A Muslim woman was picking up her child from Grenoble Public School in Flemingdon Park on Monday when she was attacked by two men, police told 680 NEWS and CityNews.

Police said the incident occurred around 3 p.m. near Don Mills Road and Eglinton Avenue East.

The brazen assault on the woman is being treated as a hate crime, according to police.

The two men approached the woman and started hurling anti-Islamic and racist profanities at her.

Police said the men started calling the woman a “terrorist” and said “go back to your country.”

One of the men started punching the woman in the stomach and a second man ripped off her hijab during the assault. The woman yelled for them to stop.

Police said her cellphone was stolen during the assault.

A day after the attack the 30-year old woman told CityNews she born and raised in Flemingdon neighborhood.

The hospital band still sits around her wrist and her two children, ages three and six, are beside her as she lies on the couch.

She recounts the traumatizing incident saying the men called her “dirty sh*t” before punching her.

Today, the woman was too fearful to send her son back to school.

“They are still out there,” she said. “Don’t say my name. Don’t show my face.”

The woman’s brother, a man named Owais, said he was shaking with rage when he first heard about the incident.

“I was already told on the phone that the situation looks like a hate crime, from an officer that called me,” he said.


The entire interview with Owais by 680 NEWS reporter Momin Qureshi can be heard here:


Owais said that when he arrived on scene an ambulance was already taking his sister to the hospital.

“When I saw her obviously she was crying … her kids were crying,” he said. “Which is a scene that no human wants to see.”

Owais said that normally his sister has her three year old with her when she goes to pick up her two other children from school, but thankfully decided to leave the three year old with her sister.

She was taken to hospital and was complaining of severe stomach pains but was released from hospital later the same day.

When she arrived at the hospital a doctor treating her started crying and said that there is now way this could have happened here.

Owais said his sister was protecting her face when the man was punching her and that she also got hit in her jaw.

“I don’t know what human, if they are human, could do that to anybody,” he said.

Owais said that the neighbourhood is a tight knit community and “according to my sister she has never seen these males in this community.”

His sister said the men were between the ages of 30 and 35 years old.

Police are searching for two suspects and described them as white men.

“The main thing is we need to get together as a community of Muslims, as Torontonians, and catch them,” said Owais. “This is not going to beat us … we are not going anywhere.”

Police said that the surveillance videos that they have viewed have not been helpful.

And not far from where that attacked happened, a relative of the woman found anti-Muslim graffiti written on the wall inside their apartment building on Saint Dennis Drive, which says “Muslims not welcome.”

Police have confirmed that they’re investigating but so far have found no connection between the assault and the graffiti.

Anyone with information is being asked to contact police.

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