A 30-year-old man hit by an egg as he prayed outside a Brooklyn mosque said he won’t let the ugly incident keep him from expressing his faith.
“I’m not scared,” the worshiper, who would only identify himself as Hossain, told the Daily News when reached. “This kind of Islamophobia that they did. (They did it) to make us scared.”
The worshiper was praying outside the Baitul Mamur Mosque and Community Center on Glenmore Ave. near Euclid Ave. in East New York around 3 p.m. on May 15 when someone hurled an egg at him.
The victim was kneeling in the street in the middle of his prayers with hundreds of other mosque congregants, when he was struck in the back.
“Somebody threw the egg. Where this come from I don’t know because my head was down at that time,” he said.
He wasn’t injured, he said. At least one other egg was thrown, hitting another congregant.
Friday, he said, is the only day “we pray outside.”
Congregants speculated the egg was hurled by a resident of a new building across the street. No arrests have been made.
“Maybe they were targeting everyone,” Hossain said. “This was a hate crime.”
The NYPD Hate Crime Task Force is investigating the incident.
Imam Ahmad Ubayda, 46, says that nearly 2,000 people come to the mosque to pray.
“About 300 to 400 people pray outside because we don’t have enough accommodation for them,” Ubayda said.
The mosque has been in the neighborhood for “the last 30 years,” he said.
“It’s never happened before,” the imam said of the egg incident. “We have a very good relationship with our neighbors. We don’t bother people, so no one should do anything with us.”
“Hopefully,” he said, “it’s never gonna happen again.”
Word of the incident was brought to Mayor Mamdani, who condemned it in a strongly worded post on social media.
“I am aware of the disturbing incident targeting worshippers during Friday prayers outside the Baitul Mamur Mosque in Brooklyn, where a man praying was struck with an egg,” Mamdani posted on X late Sunday. “That hateful act is unacceptable and an affront to the values that define us as New Yorkers. My administration is committed to rooting out anti-Muslim hate in all its forms and ensuring every New Yorker can live and worship in safety and dignity.”