In November, we brought you the story of Afaf Saudi, who accused a WM employee of stealing money from her, kicked an assistant manager, and went limp when police officers tried to take her away.
Now Ms. Saudi has failed to appear in court, and has apparently returned to Egypt to avoid facing misdemeanor charges:
I received quite some flack for my accusation that Ms. Saudi was pretending to be a victim, and that she let herself be used by Muslim groups wanting to conjure up evidence that there is a crisis of anti-Islam action and sentiment in the U.S..
GREENSBORO, N.C. -- The Muslim woman whose arrest at a Wal-Mart store prompted an outcry about police tactics skipped a court hearing and is wanted by police.Afaf Saudi, 68, failed to appear Friday to face misdemeanor charges of simple assault, second-degree trespass and resisting a public officer.
Her attorney, Seth Cohen, told the judge that Saudi had moved back to her home country of Egypt since her arrest in November and he did not believe she planned to return to the United States.
"She thinks she did nothing wrong," Cohen said after the brief District Court hearing.
Judge A. Robinson Hassell issued an order for her arrest on a charge of failing to appear in court.
Saudi, an Egyptian citizen and legal resident of the United States for 12 years, claimed two Greensboro police officers mistreated her after she refused to leave the discount retailer on Nov. 6. She suffered bruises to her wrists and arms and also injured her shoulder and ribs in a fall by a police cruiser.
A police department administrative review determined the officers followed proper procedure.
You all might be interesting in looking at the data on hate crimes against Muslims, from the FBI, and available on the FBI website. In the extended entry, I have pasted those statistics, as part of the relevant text of an email I sent to one interlocutor:
Thanks for the reply. I'm not blowing you off; I just hadn't had time to look at the raw FBI statistics. The 2001 figures are indeed dismal, but here's a time series that indicates a change for the better.
Year Number of Anti-Islamic offences/incidents/victims from FBI Hate Crime Report (http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm#hate)
1997 31/28/32
1998 22/21/23
1999 34/32/34
2000 33/28/36
2001 546/481/554
2002 170/155/174
2003 155/149/171
2004 Not Avalilable Yet
I was wrong; There was more than a small spike in 2001. I hadn't realized the severity of the increase. But given that there are more than a million self-described devout muslims in the U.S (see table 67 in the statistical abstract http://www.census.gov/prod/2004pubs/04statab/pop.pdf), and far more non-Muslims SE Asians, the probability of a Muslim being a victim of a hate crime in any year is now at most 155/1000000 or 0.02%, or about the same as being killed in a car accident (50,000/300,000,000 http://www.car-accidents.com/pages/stats.html).
For Muslims to be afraid of this is not rational, but understandable. The probability of a Mulsim being a victim of a hate crime is so small that--even though it is 5 times higher than 1997, it is essentially unchanged since 1997.
On a different note, Ms. Saudi treated others brutally--according to 12 witnesses. Frankly, I don't understand Ms. Saudi's actions at all. But I am not shocked that she could be injured by police, if she fought back, which it sounds like she did. Have you ever watched COPS? People who can't speak English aren't beat up; they're detained. How many people are arrested at WM and are not hurt? I'm sorry, but I don't think there's a tremedous conspiracy against this woman. Was she afraid to be a victim, so she fought back? I don't know.
Posted by Kevin on March, 5 2005 at 03:57 PM
