Teen's slaying leaves doubt about motive in Muslim community

Islamic leaders are questioning Virginia detectives' insistence that the beating death of a teenage Muslim girl appears to have been a case of road rage, saying the attack looks all too much like a hate crime.

Nabra Hassanen, 17, was bludgeoned with a baseball bat early Sunday by a motorist who drove up to about 15 Muslim teenagers as they walked or bicycled along a road, Fairfax County police said.

Rabia Chaudry, a lawyer and Muslim activist who lives in the Washington suburbs, ridiculed the notion it was road rage, saying on Twitter: "If you think for a minute that her appearance had nothing to do with this crime, you're lying to yourself."

CAIR called on Muslim communities to increase security during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in light of Hassanen's slaying and other recent crimes.

On Monday, British authorities charged a man with terrorism after he allegedly plowed his van into Muslim worshippers outside a London mosque, injuring at least nine people.

[...] in Portland last month, a man was charged with the equivalent of a hate crime in the fatal stabbings of two white men who were trying to defend two teenage girls, one of them wearing a hijab, from his anti-Muslim tirade.