Muslim woman attacked in library by suspect who tried to set hijab on fire, Canadian police say
A Canadian Muslim woman was targeted at a public library on Saturday in what police are calling an unprovoked attack by a suspect who attempted to remove and set the woman's hijab on fire.
Officers from the Durham Regional Police responded to an assault call at the Ajax Public Library in Ontario, about 50 miles east of Toronto, at around 12 p.m.
"Officers spoke with the victim who advised she was in the library studying when she was approached by an unknown female," police said in a news release published Sunday. "The female began yelling profanities at the victim and throwing objects at her head."
Police did not clarify which profanities the suspect yelled at the victim.
Police said the suspect also tried to remove the victim's hijab, and poured "an unknown liquid on it," before grabbing a lighter and attempting to set the hijab on fire.
The victim screamed for help and the library's security intervened, according to police.
"The suspect fled the library but was located by officers a few hours later and taken into custody without incident," police said.
Kaley-Ann Freier, 25, was arrested and charged with two counts of assault with a weapon and three counts of failure to comply with a probation order, police said, adding that "she was held for a bail hearing."
It is not clear if Freier has an attorney at this time.
The investigation into the incident is ongoing, police said, adding that 'investigators are required to consult with the Crown Attorney's office to determine whether the evidence meets the legal threshold for hate to be considered a factor.'
Durham Regional Police and the Crown Attorney's Office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Police are asking anyone with information on the incident to get in touch with their West Division Criminal Investigation Bureau.
In a news conference held Monday by members of Canada's Muslim community and local Ajax officials, a statement from the victim was read, according to CTV.
"I never imagined that a visit to my favorite, quiet corner of the library would turn into one of the most terrifying moments of my life,' the statement read. "I was simply going to study, as I had many times before, when I noticed a woman murmuring and cursing."
According to the statement, the woman attempted to ignore this before the suspect began throwing objects at her, and considered speaking to the librarian, but the "situation escalated" before she could.
'I can't stop thinking, 'What if the lighter had worked? What if my hijab had caught on fire?'" the statement read. The victim also shared in her statement that she has daughters who wear the hijab, and fears that this could happen to them has shaken her confidence in the safety of community spaces.
Canada is the leading country among G7 nations when it comes to Islamphobia-related deaths in the past seven years, according to Omar Khamissa, the National Council of Canadian Muslims chief operating officer, who spoke at the news conference Monday.
"What happened on Saturday could've easily increased that number," Khamissa said. "Canadians need to know this, they need to know this especially right now as we're in an election cycle."
Khamissa said he would like to see every party in Canada come up with a plan on how they will tackle Islamphobia and hate ahead of the upcoming elections, which have been moved from October to next month.
In a statement shared to his X account, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said what happened Saturday "is not an isolated incident."
"Islamophobia is real, it is dangerous, and it must stop," he wrote.
New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh called the attack "horrifying."
"This hate-motivated attack is a reminder that divisive rhetoric is a stain on our country and not part of our Canadian values," he wrote on X.This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Cosmopolitan
a day ago
- Cosmopolitan
I Shoplifted to Deal With Grief Over My Father's Death
I stared at the Bangladeshi man across from me, wholly convinced that I was going to prison over a value pack of black lace underwear priced at just under £5. The first and only time I got caught shoplifting, I was in a room two floors beneath London's bustling Marble Arch. I hadn't even bothered to slip the package into my backpack or waistline. Instead, I had clutched the synthetic fabric in the same hand as my cell phone, snapped my back upright, and smiled at the security guard as I walked out of Primark, confident that I would get away with it again. My criminal misconduct that year started innocently. I was a university student living in London, one of the world's most expensive cities, dodging bus fares to spend my change on pints and entry to neon-lit basements. The townhouse I shared with four girls was strewn with unwashed wineglasses and tumblers that we'd hidden under our puffer jackets when exiting restaurants and pubs. At self-checkout, I elbowed the occasional avocado into the shopping bag, 'Live well for less!' lasered onto its face in white ink. I was rummaging through the polyester junkyard of Urban Outfitters' sale section, surrounded by rows of broken hangers and damaged handbags, when I first stole something worth more than a few pounds. I tried to look bored as I picked out an open-knit, rainbow-colored cardigan without buttons or clasps. I held it to the window, fiddling with the material and contemplating its price. It looked as though it belonged to an Instagram influencer turned wellness guru living in Bali. Take it. You deserve this. A voice—my own, but I had never heard it before—pushed out the one I was more familiar with in my head. I paced my breathing to regulate my pulse. With the grace of a ballerina, I turned my back to the mirror, leaned against the wall, and shoved the cardigan into my tote. It was a gesture so swift that a bystander would have assumed the cardigan was mine. 'Have a nice day!' I called as I walked out. The security guard nodded and blinked twice to signify that he had heard me. I turned the corner and let out the air caged in my chest, waiting for guilt to claw itself back in. In Islam, theft is an unlawful sin punishable by the amputation of your hands. I wasn't a practicing Muslim, but having grown up in Lebanon, Islam shaped my understanding of right from wrong. My heart thumped, and the adrenaline swirled. I pictured nubs where my wrists met my palms, but the guilt never came. Something had finally gone my way. Instead of images of sterile emergency rooms and my father's motionless body, I felt a sense of pride. It swallowed the feeling of dread that had taken hold of my mind since his funeral. I found out my father died on Facebook. The sound of my roommate and her boyfriend next door woke me up before my alarm that morning. I checked the app as an excuse to stay in bed longer. The first post at the top of my feed was my uncle's, written in Arabic and shared only a few hours prior. I read it three times, convincing myself that I'd forgotten the letters of my mother tongue. I slept on the flight back home. I slept in my parents' bed with my brother. I slept in the hair salon's swivel chair where I'd gone with my mother before the memorial service to have my hair trimmed and blow-dried. I slept right before they laid his body, straitjacketed into a white shroud, on a mattress in the living room that we reserved for guests. Poor thing—the infuriating pity in everybody's eyes betrayed their thoughts—she's just a baby. I was only 19, but I refused to accept that I would need others to get through this. I had never been to a cemetery before and his was cramped, full of banners of young men's faces who lived as fighters and died as martyrs. My father was neither. He was a ping-pong-playing, beach-loving, salt-avoidant man in his early 50s. He was the one who taught me that there were rules to live a longer and happier life. And so, just as my father had followed rules for living, I devised—and adhered to—rules for crime. The allure of stealing wasn't its material rewards. It wasn't even the fact that it made me feel sexy—a compliment rarely given to my full cheeks and toothy smile. What appealed to me most was the self-discipline required to carry out each operation successfully. I stole reasonably priced cotton tees from the fast-fashion store that advertised its lace tops and frilly shorts exclusively to teenage girls and women who weighed less than 130 pounds. I swiped fancy sourdough sandwiches and hid kilos of frozen salmon underneath the heavy coats needed in the torrent of English rain. I tucked gold-plated jewelry into the back pocket of the black jeans I had purchased for a third of their price after swapping out the tags. If it weren't for the meddling employee at Lidl who watched me struggling with the cardboard box twice my size, I could have walked out with a brand-new rechargeable fan. My shoplifting became a party trick. My friends jokingly accused me of increasing retail companies' annual loss prevention budget. For a while, it seemed that when I stuck to the rules, I was in the clear. It was a refreshing reminder that I could still get what I wanted from the world. There was an intoxicating power in deceiving others around me. In this world, my world, I am cunning and in control, undeterred by the consequences of my behavior. In this world, I'm doing just fine. In the early dawn of my father's death, I was left without a ledge to grab hold of. I had moved out of Lebanon and left my family a year earlier. Grief had changed my life without my permission and reverted me to a child again. It pounded and pulverized my muscles and tendons, turning me into the most brittle and vulnerable version of myself. Every limb went sore when I realized that nothing about my life or the world, which I was only beginning to make sense of at the cusp of my 20s, would ever be the same again. Children lash out for their parents' attention when they don't get what they want. They don't have the tools or language to articulate their needs or to mitigate their reactions. In that moment, the only way to deal with my irretrievable loss was to take and take and take what didn't belong to me. The hunger for more could only be satisfied by getting away with my crimes again and again and again. Nineteen was too young to discover that the people we love are mortal, and so I reasoned I wasn't old enough to behave any better. After he caught me, the Bangladeshi security guard turned my backpack upside down, exposing its contents, some of them stolen, and my father's ivory rosary, an heirloom. He photocopied my Lebanese ID, front and back, and took lopsided photos of my British permit, the same card that my father picked up from the embassy for me. In the picture, my hair is unkempt and my expression smug—vaguely resembling a mugshot. Again, I pictured my hands sliced from my arms, left on my own to bleed out and repent. 'You kids think you can do anything you want,' he said with his back still turned. 'This is £5. You don't have £5?' I held back a giggle as he waved the pack of underwear in my face. He was trying to discipline me, like a father lecturing his deviant child. When I remember myself in that room, under the interrogative lights of prime commercial real estate, I don't feel much shame. Stealing as retribution for loss feels painfully obvious and self-serving, but my rules had helped me piece the world back together, even if temporarily. The man let me go that afternoon. After I left, I crossed the street to the nearest tube station. The sun had emerged again from behind the afternoon's clouds—a nudge to remind me that my father was still there, watching over me. Soon after my punishment at Primark, I donated all of my stolen clothes—the pastels, the neon, and the glitter. Sooner than I had expected, there was no more space for that girl in my closet. I had to grow up. But I kept the first real thing I stole, the rainbow cardigan. This interminable grief demands to be felt, and I am still learning how to embrace it with my hands clasped behind my back.
Hamilton Spectator
a day ago
- Hamilton Spectator
Hamilton family confirms death of baby Musa in Panama
The family of a Hamilton man who disappeared in Panama with his two young children says they've received DNA confirmation that remains recovered from a river late last month belong to seven-month-old Musa Iqbal. The heartbreaking development comes almost three weeks after Ghussan Iqbal, 31, vanished into the dense jungle near the border of Panama and Costa Rica along with his son Musa and two-year-old daughter Nousaybah. On May 31, federal Panamanian police announced they discovered the body of a minor on the banks of the Changuinola River. Musa's aunt said the family received the dreaded DNA confirmation Monday evening. 'It's been a difficult day,' a grieving Nagham Azzam-Iqbal told The Spectator on Tuesday, as she and her husband, Sulman Iqbal, drove around looking for a cemetery that keeps with traditional Muslim burial customs. 'The closest Muslim cemetery is four hours away,' she added, noting blockades in the region — the province of Bocas Del Toro recently declared a state of emergency amid government protests — have further challenged things. 'We are currently going (from) cemetery to cemetery trying to find a burial plot.' Ghussan Iqbal, 31, graduated from McMaster University and lived on the Hamilton Mountain before he moved to the Panamanian city of Changuinola about a year ago, just before his wife, Fatima, gave birth to their now seven-month-old son. He went missing with his kids on May 21. The Ancaster couple plan to fly back to Hamilton this weekend after supporting burial arrangements. They arrived in Panama on May 22, a day after Iqbal's wife, Fatima, awoke to find her husband and kids missing. Azzam-Iqbal said her brother-in-law — who moved to his wife's native country about a year ago, before Musa's birth — has a history of untreated mental illness and prior psychotic episodes. Although initially beset by a lack of resources and personnel, efforts to find Iqbal and his kids were upped last week with the deployment of dogs and dive teams to the search area, according to family. A new prosecutor was also assigned to the lead the case. The intensification of the search came as the family expressed frustration over progress and communication from authorities. In several social media videos, Azzam-Iqbal and Sulman pleaded with Canadian officials to step in. 'We were really hoping to come back with closure,' Azzam-Iqbal said Tuesday, adding she and Sulman have two young children and jobs waiting in Hamilton. 'We will continue advocating from home.' The search for Iqbal and two-year-old Nousaybah remains ongoing. Azzam-Iqbal said there have been no reported sightings of her niece since May 24, while sightings of her brother-in-law have been 'random, sporadic and none confirmed.' In light of Musa's death, a reward for information leading to the location of Iqbal and his daughter has been upped from $1,000 to $3,000, the family announced on social media Tuesday. Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page .
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
QC residents hold multiple anti-ICE protests
Quad Cities residents made their voices heard about the ongoing ICE raids in Los Angeles. Three different ICE-related protests were held throughout Davenport Tuesday at the corner of Brady and Locust, outside of the U.S. District Courthouse, and at Bechtel Park. A variety of the signs and chants called the recent ICE raids an example of totalitarianism. A couple of people told Our Quad Cities News that they were shocked to see military personnel being deployed against protesters. 'It makes it extremely more personal to me seeing familiar faces, familiar people, people who speak like me, look like me, being taken by ICE, ripped away from their kids and families, and everything they call home,' said Alex Friend, a protester. 'You can't have justice without compassion and mercy. Otherwise, you are just a brutal dictator, and that is what Trump is showing himself to be,' said Rich Hendricks, a protester. More than 20 people participated in each of the different protests. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
