|
 "Kiai!" shouted Rana Abdelhamid, an Egyptian-American with a black
belt in shotokan karate, as she demonstrated the blow.
"I'm fighting - Kiai! That's how loud I want you to be," Abdelhamid,
a Muslim human rights activist and native of Queens, New York, told
the group.
The women followed her lead, some shouting the martial arts cry
louder than others.
The workshops launched by Abdelhamid for women are among a number of
similar classes around the United States that have sprung up as
Muslims perceive themselves to be under increasing threat.
The feeling has intensified with Republican presidential candidate
Donald Trump's call in December to ban Muslims from entering the
country.
 "You can be attacked at any point. You can be pushed off ... of a
subway ledge," said Abdelhamid. She added that headscarves and the
hijab can sometimes turn Muslim women into targets.
One of the women in the class, Kristin Garrity Sekerci, an American
convert to Islam, said she wanted to be able to defend herself if
she were attacked.
"You stand out. It's not fair, but it's the reality. And you have to
equip yourself to be able to face that," said Garrity Sekerci, who
works with the Islamophobia-tracking Bridge Initiative at
Washington's Georgetown University.
Muslim advocacy groups like the Council on American-Islamic
Relations (CAIR) say anti-Muslim bias crimes in the United States
have tripled since attacks by Islamic militants in Paris in November
and shootings by Muslim extremists in San Bernardino, California, in
December.
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About 80 percent of the victims in such incidents are women, CAIR
officials say.
"There really is a need for Muslim women to protect themselves in
this society," said CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper.
The Bridge Initiative says Muslims in the United States are five
times more likely to be the victim of a hate crime than they were
before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The women in Abdelhamid's class included a young Palestinian who
works at the Pentagon and a middle-aged Yemeni who is learning
English.
"You just feel this rush of adrenaline in your body and you just
want to conquer the world," Hind Essayegh, a native of Afghanistan,
said after the class. "It's really empowering."
(Writing by Ian Simpson; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
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