NY Salon Owner Victim of Islamophobic Attack September 18, 2007

A nail salon owner in Matinecock, Suffolk County, Long Island was the victim of a bias crime over the weekend, and police are probing “all avenues” to find the perpetrators, Newsday reported. Iranian-born Zohreh Assemi, 50, of Bayville, had her chest and neck slashed with a box cutter and was robbed of $2,000:

Nassau police continued searching yesterday for two men wanted in a Locust Valley nail salon robbery they say was motivated not only by greed, but also hate, including an attack on the Iranian-born business owner, slurs and anti-Muslim graffiti.

The high-end Givan Nail and Skin Center at The Plaza was robbed about 6:30 a.m. Saturday. The men made off with jewelry, police said, and $2,000, according to the owner, Zohreh Assemi.

Assemi, 50, of Bayville, was accosted by the two men and forced inside the shop, where they assaulted her. They slammed her head on a counter, shoved a towel in her mouth, repeatedly smashed her hand with a hammer and used a knife and box cutter to slice her face, neck, back and chest.

During the robbery, the men used “anti-Islamic language” and wrote anti-Muslim graffiti on a mirror with a marker, [Detective Lt. John] May said. “We are investigating all avenues from the robbery to the assault to the bias incident,” he said.

Assemi said she began receiving threatening phone calls last month from people calling her a terrorist and telling her to leave the shopping center, where her salon is located.

Long Island’s News 12 has video.

A more in-depth piece from Newsday tells of precisely how traumatizing this attack was for Ms. Assemi. A victim of terrorism herself who had to cross borders and come to America as an asylum-seeking refugee, she said what hurt most was the racist attackers calling her a “terrorist”:

On Sept. 11, when 19 hijackers attacked her adopted country, she decided to become a U.S. citizen. So when two men ambushed her in her Locust Valley nail salon Saturday, it was their words — not their blows — that hurt her most.

They called her a terrorist.

“When you’re a victim of terrorism and you lose everything you have to terrorism, the worst thing they can call me is a terrorist,” she explained Sunday in her Bayville home. “That hurts a lot.”

They called her a terrorist, screamed “Muslim, leave Locust Valley, leave The Plaza…go back to the place you came from”, and attacked her with boxcutters.

Kudos to Ms. Assemi for standing her ground and not letting the Islamophobes win. Kudos for saying defiantly, “I will not be homeless again.” G-d willing, she never will be — and G-d willing, her attackers will also have their own defined, heavily guarded place to live for the next 15 or 20 years.