New York: Muslim woman killed by father, started infamous Rye Playland melee over hijab years ago

December 29, 2020

A tragic irony. An update on the Staten Island honor killing.

Years ago, Ola Salem started a melee at Rye Playland when park staff told her she could not wear her hijab on some of the park’s rides. Creeping Sharia posted numerous articles on the melee and subsequent court cases. See here and here.

Via Gothamist in 2011 (just days before the 9/11 anniversary):

Brooklyn Muslim Teen Takes Credit For Rye Playland Hijabs Riot
“I started the whole thing,” Ola Salem tells Lohud.com. She says she was told to remove her headgear if she wanted to go on a ride, and recalls telling the attendant, “This has nothing to do with headgear. This is my religion.” Salem complained to a manager, who refused to bend the rules, explaining that her scarf could get stuck in a wheel. As word spread among the 3,000 Muslims visiting the amusement park, a heated debate unfolded near the park’s entrance.
Lohud.com reports that some members of the group were yelling at the women to just take off their scarves. “That’s like telling a girl to take off her shirt,” Salem’s twin brother, Ali, recalls. He says he saw a park ranger push a Muslim woman, she pushed back, and then “Rangers pulled out sticks and started hitting people, taking them to the floor.” In all, 13 people were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.

Ola Salem’s father, Kabary Salem, was arrested in the melee.

The New York ~~Times~~ Crimes confirms this in an article published this Christmas Eve:

Ms. Salem was known to be outspoken. When she was 17, she made headlines after a visit to Playland Park, an amusement park in Rye, N.Y., on a youth trip to mark the end of Ramadan. When Ms. Salem was told by employees she could not join her younger sister on a ride because of her hijab, she asked to speak with management.
The issue escalated, and a small melee broke out. “I said, ‘It’s not my headgear. It’s my religion,’” Ms. Salem told The Times.

Nine years later, Ola Salem is dead and her father Kabary has been charged with her murder. The New York Daily News reported that, “she was becoming more Westernized and didn’t want to wear her hijab.“

Once a purveyor of the Islamophobia myth, Salem did not die due to Islamophobia.

Her tragic death appears to have come at the hands of her own father, an Egyptian Muslim immigrant who did not like the fact that she was becoming Americanized and no longer wanted to wear a hijab. Quite a different phobia.