US teacher suspended for ripping off student’s hijab

A teacher in the US state of Tennessee has been suspended after a video surfaced showing her ripping hijab off a student in her class.

The teacher’s Snapchat account posted two videos with the captions “pretty hair,” and “LOL all that hair cover up,” according to US media.

The incident was reported by a “concerned” user who sent to the local media.

The teacher was suspended without any pay.

“The video depicts a criminal assault, evidently motivated by the religious identity of the student, which makes this a possible hate crime,” said the council’s senior litigation attorney, Gadeir Abbas, in the press release. “We call on local law enforcement authorities to investigate this incident, determine who removed the student’s hijab, and take appropriate action to hold that person accountable.”

Various cases of attacks and discrimination on Hijab-clad woman have surfaced in Europe and the US over the years.

The number of hate crimes committed in the United States rose in 2016 for the second consecutive year, with African-Americans, Jews and Muslims targeted in many of the incidents, the FBI said on Monday in an annual report.

There were 6,121 hate crime incidents recorded last year, an almost 5 percent rise from 2015 and a 10 percent increase from 2014, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Hate Crimes Statistics report said. It did not give a reason for the rise.

About half the 1,273 incidents that involved religion were against Jews. Muslims were targeted in 307 religion-based crimes, up 19 percent from 2015 and double the number in 2014.