“Confused. Scared. Terrified.” These are but three appropriate words being used to describe the recent assault of an innocent, young girl in Toronto, Canada. 

Eleven-year-old Khawlah Noman was walking to school one morning when an attacker armed with a pair of scissors snuck up behind her and cut her hijab. He ran off while Noman hurried to school where she informed her principal of what had occured. 

The incident garnered international attention, a plethora of press conferences and interviews, and everything else these events generally entail. Except, however, the part where the public learns that such an event never happened.

That’s right, after further investigation, Toronto authorities confirmed that the supposed attack spreading like wildfire at the time, did not actually take place. “They gathered evidence from a variety of sources. The only conclusion that made sense is that the events as described, did not happen,” said Mark Pugash of the Toronto Police Service.

The family has since apologized for the statements, according to CBC News, but that is not to say they are excused from the clear span of damage their actions have caused. In fact, a portion of the damage derived from the media itself for how easily it was baited into enabling this story. 

Articles like The Guardian’s “11-year old Muslim girl ‘terrified’ after man cuts her hijab,” released prior to the revelations of the event, are a perfect example of how easily an affair like this can be unconsciously manipulative.

Aside from how bad it looks to disbelieve a child under such circumstances, there is a rather important word missing from that headline: “allegedly.” The author must have forgotten that when someone says something unsupported by evidence, it is just an allegation. 

The same goes for Newsweek, where there does not even seem to be a sign of an allegation at the time the story was written. Only a stone, cold, caps-locked declaration of the event with “Muslim Girl Attacked By Man Who Cut Off Her Hijab.”

It goes without saying that a wealth of those following the story bought into it from numerous sources. All because someone thought it would be possible to get away with adopting a victim’s burden. Ultimately, this harms two entities. 

The first would be the general public, who as of late, has engaged in a much anticipated debate regarding hate crime accusations and people’s responses to them. If claims similar to this one are automatically believed without any evidence required, then it is safe to expect plenty more of these situations in the future.

The second entity affected is Muslims. Specifically those fearing backlash over this hoax in wake of Noman’s school being berated for not vetting the girl’s account, revealed psychologist Dr. Oren Amitay to CTV News. 

The fact that this debacle gained the attention it did is unfair to legitimate victims of this kind of assault. It also hurts other Muslims who may endure unjustified discrimination in return. 

The worst part of this, though, is that this is not an isolated incident. In 2016, The New York Times reported that a Muslim woman lied about a hate crime on a subway. 

For some insulting reason, though, people get off on unlawful victimization, sometimes even at the expense of their own religion. This has since been dismissed as a sick and twisted publicity stunt spitting in the faces of all real survivors of targeted Islamophobia not only in Canada, but across the world. While our attention should still be directed towards the many actual cases of discrimination, if this is a trend that is threatening to take off in years to come, then “confused, scared,” and “terrified” are only the beginning in describing how to feel.