CAIR seeks criminal charges for assault on teen Muslim girl in Florida

NEW YORK, Dec 25 (APP):A prominent Muslim civil rights organization Sunday called for bringing criminal charges against those responsible for the brutal group-beating of a teenage Muslim girl in Boca Raton in the US state of Florida.
“The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in Florida receives numerous complaints of school bullying incidents and serious assaults against Muslim youth at a constantly increasing rate,” CAIR-Florida Civil Rights Counsel Omar Saleh said in a statement. “We have reached out to the victim’s family and will ensure that this serious issue is addressed swiftly and appropriately by local officials.”
Manaal Mushi, 14, was attacked by female students in a park near West Boca High School. Her father, Shakeel Munshi, termed the act as an incident of Islamophobia and brought light to the incident by uploading a video of the attack that went viral.
In the video, the girls pulled Manaal’s hair and then punched and kicked her repeatedly.
The father wrote, his daughter, who is a student of grade 9, was racially attacked for being Muslim. She decided to confront the girls and meet them in a park near their school but instead of solving things, Manaal was badly beaten by a gang of girls.
He added his daughter didn’t fight back and his wife called the police as soon as she came to know of the attack. Munshi also wrote that his wife pressed charges against the girls.
Munshi added that this was not the first time his daughter had been targeted.
“Sometimes she says that they make fun of her because she is a Muslim, calling her terrorist, and I used to tell her don’t take it serious, they’re just making fun of you,” he said.
However, the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office dismissed the idea of racial attack and said the incident was not being investigated as a hate crime.