A recent attack in Australia that hospitalized a pregnant hijab-wearing woman, which led to horror and fury, has shed light on violence against Islam and Muslims in the country in recent years.
Women wearing headscarves are under the highest risk of attack, according to a report published by a university depicting how social media and Australian press trigger Islamophobic attacks in the country.
Seventy-two percent of those who have been subjected to Islamophobic attacks are women wearing headscarves, and these attacks are mostly carried out by extremist men. The number of people who have been hospitalized also increased 3 percent in Australia, according to the report by Charles Stuart University. Attacks have mostly been carried out in shopping malls and schools. It was even reported that neither the children of these women nor the country’s security guards prove to deter these actions in any way.
“Perpetrators were not deterred by the public visibility of their attacks, or the vulnerability of their targets, with 57 per cent of female victims being unaccompanied at the time,” it stated.
Many Muslims are afraid to even use public transportation. A father said his children were traumatized following a racist attack on the train. He told ABC news that a group threatened to throw his children off the train; they have been unable to use public transport ever since.
Anti-Islamic discourse on social media were directly related to the number of Islamophobic attacks, which is just “the tip of the iceberg.”
