|
(Washington, D.C.; 9/4/2024) - The U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO) – the nation’s umbrella group of national, regional, and local Muslim associations – along with American Muslims, condemn the open and recorded assault on elected DNC delegate Nadia Ahmad, an openly Muslim woman, on the floor of the Democratic convention by Labor International Union of North America (LiUNA) officials for Ahmad’s silent protest against continued U.S. arming of Israeli genocide in Gaza, and today called on City of Chicago and Chicago Police Department officials to do their duty of filing hate-crime, battery, and personal injury charges against the video-taped perpetrators.
Video taken at the Democratic convention captures Ahmad, and other elected DNC delegates, holding up a “stop arming Israel” sign on Day 1 (August 19) when DNC delegates and LiUNA officials, and a recorded but not yet identified person appeared to repeatedly hit Ahmad over the head with large poles bearing “We Love Joe” signs, while others tried ripping Ahmad’s sign out of the hands of her and other protesters.
DNC event staff also appear to have abetted the attack on Ahmad and sought to cover it up by turning off the lights in the section in which the assault was taking place and by using large signs to block media cameras.
Medical professionals later diagnosed Ahmad with a concussion, from which she still suffers headaches, pain, and other symptoms.
USCMO Secretary General Oussama Jammal said in a statement:
“We unequivocally condemn those attending the Democratic convention in Chicago who brazenly and brutally assaulted a clearly identifiable Muslim woman delegate, and others, for simply exercising their guaranteed right of political protest by holding up a banner calling for the U.S. to ban arms shipments to an Israeli government legally declared as plausibly committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza.
“Seeking to humiliate, censor, and prevent the political expression of a hijab-wearing DNC delegate – at a political convention, no less – by repeatedly hitting her over the head with sign polls constitutes more than just intimidation and battery. It rises, or rather sinks, to the egregious level of a premeditated and orchestrated Islamophobic hate crime, for which the perpetrators must be brought to swift and unambiguous justice.
“That the DNC has not itself formally condemned this outrageous assault betrays a fatal bias and the purported purpose of political freedom and organization for which it claims to exist.
“Even more indefensible is the City of Chicago and the Chicago Police Department’s refusal to conduct an open and rigorous investigation of this assault and apparent hate crime – when video and photo evidence of it abounds and when the list of identifiable alleged perpetrators, abettors, and witnesses is readily available and long, indeed.
“We call on each of these parties – the DNC, the City of Chicago, and the Chicago Police Department – to conduct speedy and thorough investigations and to bring just and appropriate charges and consequences to its flagrant perpetrators.”
###
| 
