A man was stabbed repeatedly while opening the Masjid Al-Saaliheen mosque in Flushing, Queens for morning prayers on Sunday in an incident being investigated as a hate crime. Police say that around 4:45 a.m., 57-year-old Bashir Mohummad was attacked in a stairway that leads to a common area between the mosque and other businesses. The attacker, who was described as a Hispanic male in his 40s, stabbed Mohummad in the back, leg, head, and hands, then bit him on the nose when he fought back. The man reportedly yelled anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim slurs, and Mohummad tells ABC New York that he heard him say, “I’m going to kill you, I’m going to kill you, Muslim.”
Mohummad, who is originally from Afghanistan, works at a food cart in Midtown and is a regular at the mosque. “He was a very nice person, he came early in the morning to open the door, sit in my mosque and prepare everything,” says fellow worshiper Ehtashamuo Hhuge. “It is really unexpected.” Mohummad received dozens of stitches at New York Hospital Queens, and he’s already recovering at home. Police are reviewing security footage from a nearby shop, which hopefully caught the attacker.
