A Muslim shopworker said she was abused for wearing a hijab in an anti-Islamic incident inside a busy Westfield shopping centre.
Zeeba Horoni, from Sydney, was caught up in a confrontation with a young woman while heading out for dinner with her sister and a male friend in Parramatta, in the city’s west, on June 1.
The retail assistant explained she had returned to Sydney that day after visiting family in Melbourne with her sister.
Her sister’s friend picked them up from the airport around 7pm and they drove to Parramatta for dinner at a noodle restaurant at a Westfield shopping centre.
Ms Horoni was walking with her sister while their friend was slightly ahead.
She said a woman, believed to be in her late 20s, was ‘talking really loudly about the hijab’, but initially Ms Horoni believed the woman was speaking to a friend.
‘She was saying, “You don’t have to wear the hijab when you go out, it makes you oppressed, you look so much better without it”, and I thought that was a weird thing to say to a friend,’ she said in a TikTok.
Ms Horoni said she then realised the woman was talking to her.
‘She was in front of me on the escalator and I said, “Sorry, did you say something to me?” And she was swearing under her breath,’ she said.
The retail assistant admitted she was ‘scared and shocked’ by the encounter.
When she reunited with her sister and friend at the bottom of the escalator, she turned to them and said in Arabic: ‘This girl is trying to fight me’.
The woman appeared to understand the Arabic comment, as she responded by saying ‘Do you want to fight?’ and challenged her to put down her bags and fight.
Ms Horoni said she did not want a physical altercation, at which point the woman turned to the sister’s male friend and made a ‘disgusting’ remark.
‘She asked him, “Do you want to gangbang me because all your Muslim brothers want to gangbang me?”‘ Ms Horoni said.
The woman turned her attention back to Ms Horoni, telling her she needed a nose job, and continued to follow the trio while ‘being aggressive’.
‘What did I do to you? I was minding my own business and you’re attacking me,’ Ms Horoni told the woman before threatening to call the police.
Zeeba Horoni was with her sister and a friend when a woman approached and threatened her
The Sydneysider revealed the woman said to her ‘you ruined everyone else’s hijab with your hijab’.
‘My theory is she’s an ex-Muslim or maybe she has trauma from the religion and she’s taking it out on someone that’s a visible Muslim,’ she said.
Ms Horoni said the incident was ‘really scary’ and thought Parramatta ‘would be the last place this would happen’ because it’s a multicultural area.
She advised hijab-wearing women to be careful especially if they’re travelling on their own.
