Two Jordanian Muslims siblings assaulted in France

AhlulBayt News Agency (ABNA): Two Jordanian siblings were attacked in France by a French pair after they allegedly spoke Arabic.

As reported, Mohammad Abu Eid and Heba Abu Eid were attacked last week.

Mohammad, an Arabic teaching assistant, and his sister Heba, an MA student who started her graduate studies earlier in the year, said they were waiting at the bus stop when they were insulted for speaking Arabic.

In his public account of the event, Mohammad said they were followed into the bus, where insults were continuously hurled at them, and later they were chased after down the street.

The chase ended at a student housing complex, where the Jordanian siblings allege they got beaten up.

Mohammad, who had to be taken to a hospital, said he injured his face protecting his sister.

"The man stood across from us and shouted, 'This is France, this is our [country], not yours'," he recalled in a video interview with Roya news.

The siblings said they asked bystanders to call the police, but their pleas were ignored.

Heba told Roya news she believes the dissemination of anti-Arab and Islamophobic hate speech in recent days contributed to the assault, which she said was 'unprecedented' in the western city of Anger – home to thousands of international and Arab students.

"They wanted to aggravate us. They insulted us in front of everyone," she recalled. "It was scary."

The incident follows the murder of a French teacher who showed blasphemous cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad to elementary school children in the class. Macron paid tribute to the teacher, and said France would "not give up our cartoons."

Several Muslim countries including Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan have censured Macron.

Iran's Foreign Ministry summoned the French chargé d’affaires on Tuesday to protest the anti-Muslim comments by the European country’s officials in this regard.

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