King’s Student has niqab ripped off
Two men used “racially aggravated language” at Discover Islam stall before assault
Afemale Muslim student had her niqab pulled off by two men outside the King’s Strand campus last Friday.
Bystanders said the men, not thought to be students, approached the students’ stall and started using racially aggravated language before throwing leaflets over their stall. They then asked why the women: “Why are you wearing that on your face?” Before pulling a veil off of one of them.
One student said the men had been “looming” and “being very aggressive” before the incident.
The students had been running a stall as part of Discover Islam week, and were giving out Islamic literature as part of this.
According to bystanders, King’s security were unresponsive to the ongoing incident, and the police were only called when the same men started to hassle a white animal rights activist.
King’s College have said in a statement that “two security managers and a senior member of staff arrived on the scene and positioned themselves between both parties and attempted to defuse the situation” before calling the police, who arrived 40 minutes later.
The two men were then arrested under Section 4 of the Public Order Act and later released on bail.
The university says they have given CCTV footage of the area to the police.
The King’s Islamic Society later released an open letter to the university Principal, criticising both his handling of the incident as one “focussed only on preserving the image of the college” and the “lack of urgency displayed by university staff”.
They asked the professor for a statement clarifying his stance on the protection of Muslim students, clarification of the university’s implementation of the Prevent legislation on campus and “clear and honest communication” with KCL’s ISoc to prevent further incidents.
The Muslim students cite previous incidents, such as the racial profiling of a Muslim student officer who was questioned on his way to see a talk from Desmond Tutu and the vandalisation of Muslim prayer room signs.
Statistics continually show that Muslim women, especially those who wear religious garments, bare the brunt of Islamophobic attacks.
