Australian Muslim woman attacked

SYDNEY, Australia (MNTV) — Sibat Sheikh, a solicitor based in Sydney, says she was on her way to work on 22 December when she was pelted with eggs by a group of girls riding on bikes heading towards her on the footpath.

“One of the three came really close to me; I could touch her face. That’s how close she was,” Sheikh told SBS News.

“She called me a ‘dirty Muslim’. She said some other things under her breath, but I didn’t hear her. ‘Dirty Muslim’ was what I heard. And then she threw raw eggs at me.

“I heard two more eggs sort of crush on the floor. Because there was nobody between me and them, I’m assuming that those other two eggs were directed towards me.”

Sheikh said she was initially stunned, standing on the footpath. “I was a little bit like, ‘Oh my God, what’s going on?’ It was shocking to me that something like this could actually happen.”

Sheikh went to a nearby cafe to clean herself up, after which she reported the incident to a local NSW police station.

After initially being told it was not going to be recorded as a hate crime, Sheikh says she was later called by a police officer to notify her it would be.

NSW police said officers received a report on 22 December that a group of teenagers made offensive remarks towards a woman in Redfern, threw an egg at her and left the scene on bicycles.

Police have opened an investigation and are treating it as a hate crime, a spokesperson told SBS News.

Sheikh said she mostly fears for other visibly-Muslim women in the community, and said comments from political leaders since the Bondi attack have emboldened perpetrators.

“It’s completely unjust and ridiculous that regular Muslims have to bear the brunt of what happened on the 14th of December,” she said.

“We’re just regular people. We go to school, we go to work … why are we being targeted when we’re just trying to lead our everyday lives?”