New York : Two Muslim teenagers were beaten outside a New York City mosque by an attacker, who shouted slurs at them, a rights group said on Monday while demanding a police investigation into the incident.
The New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said in a statement that a 16-year-old boy was attacked outside Brooklyn’s Muslim Community Center as he took a break from prayers.
The CAIR also released a surveillance video showing a man punching and kicking the youth and then chasing and attacking another teenager when he rode past the boy on a bicycle.
The CAIR said the man was reportedly heard shouting: “You Muslims are the cause of all the problems of the world” and calling the youths “terrorists”.
The 16-year-old suffered a concussion, cuts, bruises and a badly swollen eye, and was taken to a hospital while the second teenager had a black eye, reports the Dawn.
Afaf Nasher, the executive director of CAIR in New York, said the slurs warranted an investigation into a possible bias motive.
A law enforcement source, however, said that the investigators had ruled out the incident as a bias crime as the two youth were harassing a 40-year-old woman in a car and her 37-year-old boyfriend assaulted them.
The man has been identified and a search for him is under way, the source said.
In two separate incidences, a Muslim doctor heading for morning prayers at a mosque was shot in an attack by three men in Houston on Sunday and another Muslim man was beaten outside a Florida mosque a day before. (ANI)