1. Skip to content
  2. Skip to main menu
  3. Skip to more DW sites

Muslim students buried in US

Reed, JaredFebruary 13, 2015

Three young Muslim students shot dead this week in North Carolina have been buried at a funeral attended by thousands. Their families called for the case to be treated as a hate crime.

https://p.dw.com/p/1Eb07
USA Chapel Hill Universität North Carolina Trauermarsch für getötete Studenten
Image: picture-alliance/landov/Raleigh News & Observer

Thousands of people attended Thursday's funeral of three Muslim students killed this week in their home in the North Carolina university town, Chapel Hill.

Newlyweds Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, his wife Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21, and her 19-year-old sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, were shot dead on Tuesday.

Authorities say they were killed by a neighbor, and have charged the alleged shooter, 46-year-old Craig Stephen Hicks, with murder. Investigators say initial findings point to a dispute over parking, but they are looking into whether Hicks was motivated by hatred because the victims were Muslim.

Hicks portrayed himself as a staunch atheist on his Facebook, frequently publishing posts criticizing Christianity, Mormonism and Islam. The victims' families believe the attack was religiously motivated and want it to be treated as a hate crime.

"We are definitely certain that our daughters were targeted for their religion," said the father of the sisters, Mohammad Abu-Salha. "This has hate crime written all over it and I'm not going to sit down for it."

The case has received international attention. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an Islamist politician and critic of what he sees as Islamophobia in the West, has criticized the White House for not making a statement on the incident.

"If you stay silent when faced with an incident like this, and don't make a statement, the world will stay silent towards you," Erdogan said during a visit to Mexico. The White House said on Wednesday that it would wait for the police investigation's results before commenting on the killings.

There are some 65,000 Muslims in North Carolina, a state with a population of 9.9 million. The majority of the state's Muslims live in the Chapel Hill area.

jr/msh (AFP, Reuters)