FBI Agent: Muslim Student's Alleged Assault May or May Not Be a Hate Crime
by Jim Brown
April 25, 2006
(AgapePress) - - The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is investigating the alleged attack on a Muslim student at a large Baptist university in Texas as a possible hate crime.According to the female Muslim student, she was walking to her dorm on the Baylor University campus on April 1 when a white male assaulted her and threatened to kill her. She claims the man grabbed her headscarf, threw her to the ground and kicked her, meanwhile uttering anti-Muslim slurs.
FBI Special Agent Rene Salinas of San Antonio is leading the investigation into the matter and says the suggestion has been made "that the alleged attack on this particular student was caused or was the direct result of a hate crime." As a result of this allegation, he explains, "the FBI has initiated a preliminary investigation under a civil rights violation -- it would be a civil rights/hate crime -- to make a determination if the allegation is true."
Salinas notes that two factors typically prompt a hate crimes investigation. The crime "has to be racially motivated or religiously motivated," he says, as it would appear to be in this case, if the allegations are true.
However, the federal agent points out, not all crimes involving persons of a particular race or religion or their property are necessarily hate crimes. For instance, he asserts, "The three college students that were burning the Baptist churches ... well, it's not just the fact that they were Baptist churches [or that] they were African American or black Baptist churches." For the authorities to designate the church burnings a hate crime, evidence would have to suggest that the perpetrators were specifically motivated.
In 1992 Congress defined a hate crime as any crime in which "the defendant's conduct was motivated by hatred, bias, or prejudice, based on the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability of another individual or group of individuals."
According to the FBI spokesman, a crime such as the burning of black churches or Baptist churches might not be prosecuted under hate crime legislation if nothing in the crime indicates the victim was specifically targeted for one of the specified reasons.
"If an individual, for example, goes to a black Baptist church and starts putting up swastikas and all sorts of hate symbols and so forth on it, then the FBI gets involved in that situation," Special Agent Salinas explains. However, he did not say whether the Bureau's investigation into the alleged attack at Baylor University had generated any new leads.
The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) has offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the alleged attacker.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
