Kawther Ayed spoke to a Muslim woman who was subjected to Islamophobic insults while in Whipp’s Cross hospital.
Hate crimes against Muslims in Britain are reported to have spiked by 300 per cent since the Paris attacks on 13 November 2015. The siuation was already bad enough: in a survey conducted by the Islamic Human Rights Committee (IHRC) in 2011, three quarters of all respondents had heard hostile remarks being made about Islam and more than half said they had experienced direct, verbal attacks.
Rising East’s political editor Kawther Ayed asked Zahrah Fazil, a Hijabi from Leyton, about the abusive incident which she recently experienced at Whipp’s Cross Hospital:
I was in the hospital looking for some department. I was just about to walk around the corner of a corridor, and this middle aged woman had a suitcase with her. She walked past me and my mum. We were going in opposite directions and she hit my leg with her suitcase. I carried on walking but I heard her say, “watch where you’re going!”. So I said, “you watch where you’re going yourself!”. I carried on walking, then after a few seconds she came running up to me, huffing and puffing. She said “Who do you think you are, running that mouth of yours to me?”. I said “you’re the one who approached me first, I never asked for an argument”.
My mum was worried that this lady might hit me or do something to me, so my mum literally stood in between us. Then the lady said “you’re just a stupid little girl”, and after a brief exchange of angry word between us, she said “you better watch that mouth of yours before I rip that filthy thing off your head”. I was so shocked. I’ve had some hostile experiences but I’ve never had someone say that to me. I said to her “this is the same thing that your Lady Mary wears on her head,” and she said “you can’t compare yourself to her, you’re just a slag.” I said “I’m not comparing myself to her, Mary is a holy being and I’m nothing in comparison to her, I just look up to her as a role model and I like to follow this type of lifestyle”.
She was swearing at me with strong language and Islamophobic slurs. I didn’t catch everything but I recall her saying something along the lines of “filthy Muslims are here to blow up the country”. I responded with “if that was true, you be wouldn’t be alive right now”. Then she angrily started walking away, and I was also frustrated and angry, so I said “yeah, carry on walking”. She stopped and turned around, and said “you’re racist”, and then walked off. My mum and I were so confused at that. She was the one who slandered me and shouted abuse, and then she calls me racist.
Afterwards, I was just really shocked and angry. I’ve never been this angry before. Towards the end, there were a few people around. There was a man dressed in a red uniform, I think he was a nurse, and he just stood there in shock. I felt like the workers who watched were supposed to be protecting the patients but they weren’t. Nobody said anything and I was so surprised. But afterwards, I calmed down but then felt emotional because I was questioning how people could do that to me? I’m from here (the UK). I didn’t even think of calling the police, I was too angry and taken aback.
Don’t be a silent victim – that’s my advice to other Hijabis. These people think they can just come to you, say whatever they want, release their anger and feelings on you and walk away. They can’t. Don’t stay silent on this matter because the more silent you are, the more they will have the audacity to attack you again and again.
I know it is a scary thing to experience but don’t be scared. Even if they think they can attack us, we have the police with us.