CLEVELAND, Ohio — A national wave of Islamophobia stoked by Donald Trump and Republican leaders came to a head last week when armed Avon police wrestled an Emirati businessman to the ground after a hotel clerk thought he was a terrorist, local Muslim leaders said.
The incident happened less than two weeks from the start of the Republican National Convention in nearby Cleveland.
“A lot of this hysteria is from the national elections; this is the mantra coming from Trump,” Uqbah Mosque Foundation President Imam Abdusemih Tadese said Tuesday.
Police tackled and handcuffed Ahmed Almenhali of The United Arab Emirates at the Fairfield Inn and Suites on Colorado Avenue last Wednesday.
They were responding to calls from a hotel clerk’s father and 17-year-old sister. The sister told a dispatcher that the clerk sent a text message that “a male in a headdress with multiple disposable phones was pledging his allegiance to ISIS” and to call police.
The clerk, 22-year-old Alex Silva, of Lorain, told police after the arrest that the man never mentioned ISIS. The Lorain County Prosecutor’s office will decide whether to file charges against her.
Ahmed Almenhali was tackled and arrested by Avon police after the department received a report of a man “pledging his allegiance to ISIS.” Almenhali was in the Cleveland area undergoing stroke treatment at the Cleveland Clinic.
Almenhali was undergoing stroke treatment at Cleveland Clinic and was trying to check into a room.
The incident prompted the The United Arab Emirates on Sunday to warn its citizens against wearing traditional garments when traveling abroad.
“She didn’t hear anything about ISIS,” Amir Khalid A-Samad, CEO of the Islamic Shura Council of Cleveland said. “She made that up because she heard those voices of division, racism, polarization and demagoguery that will be coming here in the next two weeks.”
Julia Shearson, Executive Director of the Cleveland Chapter of CAIR-Ohio Muslim-American community group, called the RNC a “$50 million festival of hate.”
“They should have turned their backs to this and not allowed this to happen in the city of Cleveland; to have people coming here with a plank that is going to say we are going to ban Muslims from coming here to America,” Shearson said. “This is out of control and we as a community need to say enough is enough.”