A South Asian Muslim woman who wears the hijab was walking with their husband in a Morrisons car park when a man had targeted her with misogynistic and racist abuse on July 12.
The abuse began when a white male, in his mid-to-late sixties, said, “Don’t rob me” about her face mask and thinking nothing of the remark, believing it to be a joke, she replied, “You’re safe.”
He then muttered “You f*cking b*tch” as she passed him, causing her to stop, turn around, and challenge him to repeat his abuse.
Rather than repeat his misogyny, he shouted racist abuse: “Why don’t you go back to Iraq, your own country.”
Not wanting to let him get away with it, she described to Tell MAMA how she followed the man towards a car owned by a friend as he continued to make racist remarks towards her, before departing.
The Metropolitan Police are investigating the Islamophobic hate crime, which, to protect her identity further, we are only disclosing a partial location of south-east London.
This racist incident again demonstrates how misogyny intersects with the racialised targeting of Muslim women for their ethnicity and religious clothing. Dehumanising and othering statements linking Muslims to robbery or as ninjas for wearing the face veil (niqab) is a theme long documented in our research.
Academics have analysed how racialised and gendered forms of prejudice, violence, and discrimination harm Muslim women.
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