Ottawa police investigate hate crime after Muslim school targeted with graffiti

CBC News Posted: Apr 11, 2016 9:57 AM MT Last Updated: Apr 11, 2016 11:27 AM MT

Two Syrian refugee fathers say they’re scared for their kids in Calgary after both men say they were assaulted over the weekend in Forest Lawn.

Police don’t believe the incidents to be racially motivated, but the alleged assaults have made the newcomers uneasy.

Speaking through a translator, Wesam Alomare says he’s nervous about the safety of his children after he was attacked Saturday.

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Alomare says he was outside his housing complex at the 1300 block of 41st Street S.E. on Saturday afternoon, where 28 newly arrived Syrian families live.

He says two men approached, yelling in English, then one hit him in the face with an open hand.

“They said so much, but the only word I understood is the f-word,” he said.

Alomare says a neighbour scared the attackers off.

Basel Al Dnifat says he had just left his English class when he was confronted by two men and slapped by one of them. (CBC)

About half an hour later and four blocks away, another Syrian man, Basel Al Dnifat, says he had just left his English class at the Calgary Immigrant Educational Society on 17th Avenue and 39th Street S.E. when two men approached him.

He also says a man hit him across the head with an open hand. Al Dnifat says his English teacher helped him call police.

Calgary police confirm they have a report on the incidents and are investigating. At this point the attacks are not being handled as hate crimes.

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Al Dnifat says he’s grateful his kids were not targeted.

“I can deal with this, but I don’t know what my kids would do,” Al Dnifat said.

The attackers were in their early 30s and were light-skinned, possibly Asian, white or aboriginal, said Alomare.

One of them had a deep scar on the left side of his neck.

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Ottawa police have launched a hate crime investigation after someone spray-painted messages on the wall of a Muslim elementary school in Ottawa overnight.

People who live near the Ahlul-Bayt Islamic Education Centre in Vanier said they contacted police and the school Monday morning after waking up to see the phrases “Die Bombers,” “ISIS Go Home” and “F**k the New World” in orange and black paint on its back wall.

Staff at the private school for children in junior kindergarten to Grade 8 said it doesn’t matter if it was done as a joke.

Nour Matar is a teaching assistant at Ahlul-Bayt Islamic Education Centre. (CBC)

“It intimidates our students, it intimidates the staff here and it’s really sad to see that even though we’re Canadian citizens, people always try to scare us.”

“We just need to make people aware, this is serious. They bring deadly messages,” said teacher Fatime Haidoura.

“[It may be] some kids playing around so we just need to bring the message of peace out. We need all of us together to keep Canada safe and keep our community safe.”

Haidoura said children were kept inside at recess while the messages were removed.

She said their building gets spray-painted with graffiti about once a year, but this is the first time vandals have left such hateful messages behind.

Neighbours reach out

Kelly-Anne Maddox can see the back wall of the school from the front window of her home.

“We were horrified, we were absolutely appalled that somebody would do that,” she said.

She said she and her husband reached out to police and the school about the spray paint and offered to put a camera on their back fence if the school felt it would help.

“We’re really fortunate to live in a really ethnically- and linguistically-diverse community, and this is the first time I’ve seen anything like this happen in five years,” she said.

“This seems to be a deliberate [targeting] of children because it’s facing the playground and this is what kids would have seen as soon as they showed up at school this morning.”

Fatime Haidoura teaches at the school. (CBC)

Haidoura said the community response has helped them feel better about what happened.

“Out of all this negativity something really positive happened, the support of the neigbourhood,” she said.

“We found messages on our answering machine, parents are talking to us, neighbours are saying they’re against this … it was a really positive thing to find out after this happened, it [calmed] us down.”

=========Muslim woman faces racial slurs at school

Windsor, Ontario

A routine drive to drop the kids off at school turned into a nightmare for Dalal Boulbol, who says she was called a “terrorist” and threatened by another motorist last week.

Boulbol was one stop light away from her children’s school when a driver allegedly pulled up alongside her and started yelling.

The concerned mother, a Muslim woman who was wearing her hijab at the time, ignored the verbal attack and drove away. But the alleged threats didn’t end there.

Police say the woman has since apologized for the incident, but no charges are being pursued, according to OPP Const. Stephanie Moniz.

Shocked by verbal attack

Boulbol and her children were alarmed by the incident that began Thursday morning at the intersection at Howard Avenue and Highway 3, then continued several blocks away at the children’s school.

The woman yelled words like “terrorist” and uttered phrases like “go back to your country” and “you don’t belong here,” Boulbol recalled.

Shocked by the vulgarity and surprised something like this could happen in the city she grew up in, Boulbol said she initially laughed.

“I’m laughing and chuckling to myself and I believe that enraged her even more,” Boulbol said.

That’s when she says the woman started making threatening gestures, “implying she wanted to kill me.”

The woman followed Boulbol to Al-Hijra Academy on Howard Avenue, where she rolled down her window and continued to yell threats.

The principal and teachers at the school also witnessed the incident, but when they came out to inquire, the woman drove away.

The OPP confirmed they contacted the driver, who has since apologized to school staff. The woman has not been charged with any criminal activity.

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