The name of a Jewish fraternity was graffitied in a Muslim prayer room at New York University’s library last week, according to school officials.
A student was visiting the prayer room in Bobst Library last Thursday when they discovered that the room had been vandalized. Its prayer mats were soaked in urine, and a phallic image was drawn on its walls along with the letters “AEPI,” representing the Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi.
The New York Police Department’s Hate Crime Task Force is investigating the incident along with NYU. The school put out a statement following the incident, writing that those responsible would be “subject to the most serious sanctions.”
“This desecration of a religious space is vile, reprehensible, and utterly unacceptable,” the statement said. “It contravenes every principle of our community, and we condemn this act of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hate.”
The fraternity’s global office said that it was not aware of any involvement of its members and condemned the incident. It said its NYU chapter was cooperating with the investigation.
“As an organization, we strongly condemn this vandalism and our Alpha Chapter is fully cooperating with the administration’s investigation,” wrote Jon Pierce, a spokesman for AEPi international, in an emailed statement. “Hopefully, the investigation will find the perpetrator(s) and, when they are found, we believe they should be punished appropriately by the university and proper authorities.”
NYU was home to the first AEPi chapter in the country, founded in 1913. But the school’s AEPI chapter has been suspended for the past decade for hazing, according to a university website, and is not permitted to hold programs at the school.
The incident has sparked outcry on social media from members of NYU’s Muslim community and others who have called on the university to hold the vandals accountable and protect Muslim students. In a post on Instagram, Faiyaz Jaffer, a Muslim chaplain and research scholar for the Islamic Center at NYU, wrote that Muslim students at the school had expressed “fear, anxiety and outrage.”
“This was not simply an act of vandalism; it was a malicious and deeply disrespectful attack driven by anti-Muslim hatred,” Jaffer said in the statement.
A coalition of Muslim student groups called for the university to expel those responsible for the vandalism and to install security cameras at the prayer space.
“We are outraged and disgusted by this blatant attack on Muslim students in our space,” the groups wrote on Instagram. “This is not just an ‘incident’ — it is a hate crime and a direct threat to our safety. How can we feel safe in this university when our safety is almost always at risk?”
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