New York’s supposed post-election wave of hate crimes got less wave-y this week, as the NYPD announced that Yasmin Seweid had made up her story of being attacked by Muslim-bashers yelling “Trump, Trump, Trump” on the subway.
She’s now charged with filing a false report and obstructing government administration. Let us hope the lesson’s learned.
No, this doesn’t falsify any other similar accounts: Police are still pursuing other cases, including attacks and threats against two Muslim women, a city transit worker and an off-duty cop.
But it exposes the perils of buying too quickly into the “wave of hate” narrative.
Seweid is just 18, and apparently was trying to avoid her parents’ wrath for breaking curfew by making up her tale of three drunken men taunting her and trying to pull off her hijab.
What made her account stand out was her claim that other straphangers on the crowded train stood by and did nothing. That just didn’t ring true about our fellow New Yorkers.
Her problem, it turns out, wasn’t Islamophobia, but living at home in a traditional Muslim family that allegedly didn’t care for her becoming “Westernized” — dating a Catholic, drinking and staying out late.
On Wednesday, she appeared in court sans hijab and with a shaven skull. It seems that her father removed the long locks she usually covered in a headscarf — and her eyebrows, too. Do New York’s progressives have any comment on that?
This case has echoes of the 1987 Tawana Brawley affair — which also began with a young girl making wild accusations to avoid parental fury. Happily, Seweid came clean rather than embrace “help” from some 2016 equivalent of the Rev. Al Sharpton & Co.
Hate crime deserves to be taken seriously — and the NYPD does just that, devoting serious resources to following up on any report. Yet false reports feed fear and suspicion.
In these times, New Yorkers need to be united, not divided by phantom menaces.