The 6-year-old Palestinian child who was brutally stabbed to death in Plainfield Saturday morning had just celebrated his birthday, according to a national Islamic relations organization.
According to a news release from the Chicago office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Wadea Al-Fayoume and his mother, Hanaan Shahin, were the victims of Saturday’s hate crime
“The mother, Hanaan Shahin, and her son Wadea Al-Fayoume had lived on the ground floor of the house for two years with no previous notable issues with the landlord,” reported as a 71-year-old man who is accused of the killing.
“According to written text messages reportedly sent to the father of the boy by the mother from the hospital and shared with CAIR-Chicago,” the release stated, “the landlord who had been angry with what he was seeing in the news knocked on their door, and when she opened, he tried to choke her and proceeded to attack her with a knife, yelling ‘you Muslims must die!'”
“Our hearts are heavy, and our prayers are with the darling boy and his mother,” CAIR-Chicago Executive Director Ahmed Rehab said in the release. “As we await the official investigation of the local authorities, what we can confirm at the moment is that we have a murdered child in his own home, a six-year who had just celebrated his birthday a couple of weeks ago, and a mother lying in the hospital in serious condition, both stabbed over a dozen times. And we have testimony from the mother as to the harrowing moments that unfolded in terms of what was done and said – and it is our worst nightmare.”
The crime has received national attention, with President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden saying they were “shocked and sickened” over the attack in a statement released by the White House Sunday.
Governor JB Prtizker also issued a statement condemning the attack, saying “To take a six year old child’s life in the name of bigotry is nothing short of evil. Every single Illinoisan – including our Muslim, Jewish and Palestinian neighbors – deserves to live free from the threat of such evil. Today, MK and I join our Muslim and Palestinian brothers and sisters in mourning this tragic loss and praying for the recovery of Wadea’s mother.”
“May Wadea Al-Fayoume’s memory be a blessing.”
Illinois State Police issued a statement stating that “at this time, there is no actionable intelligence regarding any credible mass threats in Illinois.”
Rehab blamed the incident largely on media coverage of the terrorist attack by Hamas in Israel.
“[One-sided] statements issued by public officials and one-sided reporting by the media has [helped] create [a] lop-sided atmosphere in which members of our community are essentially sitting ducks. This is doubly concerning because we had come to believe that we had learned the hard lessons from the darkest days of flippant Islamophobia in the years after 9/11 where the lack of balanced leadership of our elected leaders, and the irresponsible and biased reporting by the media directly contributed to hanging our communities out to dry.”
