NEW YORK, July 27 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The New York office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-NY) today called on the FBI to investigate an attack on two Muslim teenagers in Buffalo as a possible hate crime.

The Muslim teens, sisters who wear Islamic head scarves, say they were targeted Sunday by white teenagers who shouted ethnic slurs and then tried to hit the girls with their car. One of the teens pushed her sister out of the path of the car, but was herself injured when the car ran over her foot. Local law enforcement authorities are treating the attack as a possible bias-related crime.

SEE: "Erie County D.A. Investigating Possible Hate Crime" http:// www.wivb.com/Global/story.asp's(equals)2091379&nav (equals)0RapPCWO

"Muslim women should be able to walk down a street in America without fear of attack or harassment," said CAIR-NY Executive Director Wissam Nasr. "FBI involvement in this case will send the message that bias crimes targeting American Muslims are taken seriously at the highest levels of government." Nasr also said the FBI has resources that may be useful in the investigation.

Incidents targeting Muslim individuals and Islamic institutions have occurred recently across America. A Muslim woman driver in Illinois and a Muslim shopper in California were assaulted at the end of June by attackers shouting anti-Muslim and racist slurs.

In Florida, vandals wrote "Kill all Muslims" inside the Islamic Community Center in the Tampa suburb of Lutz. The FBI is also investigating vandalism and threatening messages targeting the Islamic Community of Southwest Florida in Charlotte Harbor. In Missouri, vandals painted a Nazi swastika and the word "die" on an addition under construction at the Islamic Foundation of Greater St. Louis. Three Miami Islamic centers were vandalized.

Earlier this year in Texas, a man was arrested for threatening an El Paso Islamic center, an arson suspect was arrested at the scene of a fire at a Muslim business in San Antonio and vandals scrawled racist graffiti on the interior of a Lubbock mosque. White crosses and "F U Arab" were spray-painted inside a Middle Eastern grocery store targeted by arsonists in Everett, Wash. A home-made bomb exploded in the mailbox of a Houston, Texas, Islamic center.

In response to anti-Muslim incidents, CAIR published a "Muslim Community Safety Kit." The safety kit may be obtained free of charge by e-mailing pubs(At)cair-net.org. (Include name, address and phone number when requesting the safety kit.)

CAIR, America's largest Islamic civil liberties group, has 28 regional offices and chapters nationwide and in Canada.

NOTE: CAIR offers an e-mail list designed to be a journalist's window to the American Muslim community. To SUBSCRIBE to ISLAM- INFONET, go to: http://cair.biglist.com/islam-infonet/

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Wissam Nasr

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