{"id":35254,"date":"2017-06-20T13:00:09","date_gmt":"2017-06-20T13:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/police-nabra-hassanen-killed-in-road-rage\/"},"modified":"2017-06-20T13:00:07","modified_gmt":"2017-06-20T13:00:07","slug":"police-nabra-hassanen-killed-in-road-rage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/police-nabra-hassanen-killed-in-road-rage\/","title":{"rendered":"Police: Nabra Hassanen killed in ‘road rage incident’"},"content":{"rendered":"

{Many express outrage over Virginia police’s decision not to investigate murder of Muslim teenager as a hate crime.}<\/p>\n

The murder of a teenage Muslim girl beaten and killed by a bat-wielding motorist near a Virginia mosque was likely a “road rage incident”, not a hate crime, US police said, prompting outrage from many who say the teen was targeted because of her religion. <\/p>\n

Darwin Martinez Torres, 22, has been arrested and charged with Nabra Hassanen’s murder in an incident police say began as a road dispute with a male teenager who was among Hassanen’s group.<\/p>\n

“It appears that the suspect became so enraged over this traffic argument that it escalated into deadly violence,” Fairfax County police spokeswoman Julie Parker said at a news conference on Monday.<\/p>\n

Parker said there was no indication the attack near the All Dulles Area Muslim Society mosque early on Sunday was motivated by race or religion.<\/p>\n

She added that there was no sign that Martinez used racial slurs as he chased the group of teens into a car park, emerged from his car with a baseball bat and struck Hassanen before loading her into a car and dumping her body in a pond in a neighbouring town.<\/p>\n

Hassanen’s father, Mohmoud Hassanen Aboras, told The Guardian newspaper he believes his daughter was killed because “she is Muslim”.<\/p>\n

He also told reporters he doesn’t want anyone to feel the pain he feels.<\/p>\n

“My daughter is dead, and I don’t want anyone to feel what I feel, to lose your 17-year-old daughter \u2026 Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hispanic, whatever,” he said.<\/p>\n

Authorities said its findings could change pending an ongoing investigation. <\/p>\n

{{‘Words shape narrative’}}<\/p>\n

Police had announced earlier on Monday that they were “not investigating [Hassanen’s] murder as a hate crime”, provoking deep scepticism among many within the Muslim community.<\/p>\n

Abas Sherif, a spokesman for the victim’s family, said Hassanen and the other girls in her group were wearing headscarves, leaving many to believe she was targeted because of her religion.<\/p>\n

Online, many expressed outrage over the decision by police not to investigate the incident as a hate crime.<\/p>\n

{{Anti-Muslim hate crimes}}<\/p>\n

Others highlighted the surge of anti-Muslim crimes and the rise of Islamophobia worldwide in recent years, also pointing to Monday’s attack in north London’s Finsbury Park, in which a man drove a van into a group of people leaving Ramadan prayers at a nearby mosque.<\/p>\n

The Council on American-Islamic Affairs (CAIR), an Islamic civil rights organisation, urged US police to “conduct a thorough investigation of possible bias motive in [Hassanen ‘s] case, coming as it does at a time of rising Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hate attacks nationwide”.<\/p>\n

In a recent report, CAIR documented a 57 percent increase in anti-Muslim bias incidents from 2015 to 2016.<\/p>\n

“This was accompanied by a 44 percent increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes in the same period,” the report said.<\/p>\n

In May, two men were stabbed to death as they tried to stop a white supremacist who was bullying Muslim women on a train in Portland, Oregon.<\/p>\n

Critics argue the rhetoric by President Donald Trump has contributed to the rise. Trump signed an executive order earlier this year that would ban travellers from six Muslim-majority countries from entering the US. That order has been frozen by several courts.<\/p>\n

Others point to the way Islam has been been portrayed by media organisations, particularly those in the US. <\/p>\n

CAIR also documented at least 10 anti-Muslim laws that were enacted by state legislatures between 2013 and 2015.<\/p>\n

\"Anti-Muslim<\/figure>\n

Source:Al Jazeera<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{Many express outrage over Virginia police’s decision not to investigate murder of Muslim teenager as a hate crime.} The murder of a teenage Muslim girl beaten and killed by a bat-wielding motorist near a Virginia mosque was likely a “road rage incident”, not a hate crime, US police said, prompting outrage from many who say […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-35254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35254\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35254"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=35254"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=35254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}