Hijab-clad woman, family called ‘bunch of terrorists’ in US

HOUSTON: A hijab-clad woman and her family were allegedly taunted and called a “bunch of terrorists” at a busy town square near here, the latest in a series of hate incidents in which headscarf-wearing women have been targeted in the US following Donald Trump’s win.

21-year-old Shifa Abuzaid and some of her younger cousins and siblings strolled through Sugar Land Town Square, Texas, when a man called them a “bunch of terrorists,” she recounted in a Facebook post.

The taunting episode caught the public’s attention and soon her post had been shared more than 2,500 times.

Abuzaid and her family members had been walking to their car after lunch when they passed the verbally abusive man and a woman, Abuzaid told Houston Chronicle about Saturday’s incident. She and her cousins live on the same street near Sugar Land, southwest of Houston.

Mayor Joe Zimmerman was swift to condemn the incident, saying, “prejudice of any kind is unacceptable.”

“We still have racism in Houston and we still have people who hate Muslims in Houston,” Mustafaa Carroll, executive director for the local chapter of the Council on American- Islamic Relations, was quoted as saying.

A police officer told Abuzaid he could not do anything because no one was physically harmed, she said.

Later, Sugar Land Police Chief Douglas Brinkley said he believed the officer was told no one had been injured but that police planned to look again at it.