Loading ...RAW VIDEO: Arab American community calls for end to Bay Area Islamophobia
Members of the Arab American community and their allies rallied outside San Francisco City Hall Friday calling for an end to a resurging Islamophobia in the Bay Area and across the country.
A crowd of well over 100 people, comprised of Arab and non-Arab community members, gathered together on the steps of City Hall, chanting their demands: “dignity, liberation, self-determination.”
Many attendees said they have been on the receiving end of racism and xenophobia. With the rise of the Islamic State, they said more and more people here in America have been treating them with disrespect and appear to be confusing Islam with ISIS.
Protesters carried signs that read “Arab Lives Matter,” “Muslims Against Racism” and “Jews Against Islamophobia.”
Reem Suleiman, a community advocate with the Asian Law Caucus, reminded the crowd that “Exclusion does not make America safer” and numerous attendees expressed their fears that increased racism would do more harm to America than the Arab and Muslim communities who live here.
Rasheed Albeshari, a 32-year-old San Francisco resident who says a woman assaulted him at Lake Chabot Regional Park in Castro Valley earlier this month, attended the rally and described what happened to him that day.
Albeshari said he and his friends were at the lake on Dec. 6 and some of his friends were finishing their prayers, when a woman approached them. She started “talking bad about Allah,” Albeshari said.
She started “talking bad about Allah,” Albeshari said.
The incident is captured on video and shows the woman insulting them for being Muslims.
Albeshari explained that the woman said that their Allah, or God, was Satan and called them terrorists.
The suspect, Denise Slader, hit him in the face with an umbrella, he said.
Slader has been charged with battery on a school, park or hospital property and violation of civil rights for the confrontation, according to the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office.
“We take very seriously conduct that infringes upon our citizens’ right to be free of violence and hatred,” District Attorney Nancy O’Malley said in a statement. “Ms. Slader’s actions must be addressed within the criminal justice system.”
Slader, an employee of the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, is scheduled to be arraigned on the charges on Jan. 7.
Albeshari said, “I hope this will stop and I hope people stop Trump-overdosing,” explaining that Donald Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric is racist and hurtful.
Another San Francisco resident, 14-year-old Ayaa Subuh, who identifies as Palestinian, said she too has been a victim of xenophobia.
She and her Arab friends were called terrorists by another student while at Raoul Wallenberg Traditional High School, she said.
Subuh said that when the incident occurred last Friday, she was shocked.
While said the student who called them terrorists was instructed to apologize, did apologize, Subuh said she thinks the student should also have been given more education about Arabs and their culture.
Subuh said she’s not mad though, explaining, “You can’t be mad at someone who’s uneducated.”
Source: kron4.com