Victim speaks out after woman allegedly tried to light her hijab on fire inside Ajax library

CBC News

· Posted: Mar 24, 2025 4:14 PM EDT | Last Updated: 6 minutes ago

A hijab-wearing pistillate who was astir acceptable connected occurrence astatine an Ontario room implicit the play is speaking retired astir the "absolute horror" of the alleged attack.

The victim's connection was work aloud by a subordinate of the National Council of Canadian Muslim astatine a quality league connected Monday afternoon. 

"I ne'er imagined that a sojourn to my favourite, quiescent country of the room would crook into 1 of the astir terrifying moments of my life," said the victim's connection work by senior advocacy serviceman Fatema Abdalla. 

Durham Regional Police accidental a pistillate was studying astatine the Ajax Public Library astatine noon connected Saturday, erstwhile she was approached by an chartless pistillate yelling profanities astatine her and throwing objects astatine her head.

Police accidental the 25-year-old fishy past tried to region the woman's hijab portion pouring an chartless liquid onto it.

"I can't halt thinking, 'What if the lighter had worked? What if my hijab had caught connected fire?'" said the victim's statement. 

Police said the fishy fled the library, but was arrested a fewer hours aboriginal and charged with 2 counts of battle with a limb and 3 counts of failing to comply with probation order.

NCCM CEO Stephen Brown said the enactment is powerfully urging constabulary to analyse the incidental arsenic a hatred crime. 

"It is an outrage that this benignant of unit has go a regular occurrence successful our community. Incidents of Islamophobia person accrued exponentially successful caller years. It is clip for our elected leaders to measurement up and code this contented collaboratively."