Muslim man on his way to deliver Friday sermon beaten up in US

Rashid Dar believes he was targeted because of the clothes he was wearing

A young Muslim man on his way to deliver a Friday prayer sermon was punched near a train station in Washington, DC on Friday.

The 27-year-old was punched in his collarbone and believes he was targeted because of how he was dressed. “I think a lot of Muslim men can sneak under the radar,” he said. “My wife wears a scarf. I always wanted to wear hats and grow my beard out if only in solidarity with women who bear the scrutiny most of the time.”

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Dar was walking with his brother when he said a man approached them on the sidewalk near DC’s Dupont Metro station. “He dropped his bag, he wound up and punched me straight in the…I’m sure he was aiming for my throat, but he hit my collarbone,” he said.

After the man hit him, Dar’s brother began to yell at him. He said the assailant “put up his arms in a fighting position,” and the two began to circle each other as if they were about to fight. “A couple of guys in the street had seen what happened and tried to break it up,” Dar said.



“Then, in all that ruckus, he took the opportunity to run,” he added. Dar said he was dressed in a black overcoat – also called a jubba – that he bought from a visit to Turkey. He also wore a black taqiyah. Dar said he wears his Muslim attire on Fridays and typically keeps the clothes he wears to his job as a Brookings Institution research assistant underneath.

PHOTO: BUZZFEED

Once Dar got to the cafe, he tweeted his story to DC Metro Police and later filed a report. The department assigned a detective to his case. Dar described the attacker as a black man in his 20s or 30s with a grey baseball cap and dark clothing, according to a report from the DC Metro Police Department sent to BuzzFeed News. But he said he is not focused on the individual who punched him.

https://twitter.com/rashiddar/status/781896925171716097

“I’m not so concerned about bringing this specific perpetrator to justice,” he said. “I’m more concerned about the permissive environment that made this person feel, in his mind, that it was OK to punch a Muslim person.” He added, “I’m not ashamed of being a Muslim.”

“Now that this attack has happened, I’m not going to change anything about how I go about my day. I don’t want that to be a result of what comes out of this.”

This article originally appeared on BuzzFeed.