The Patriot Post® · Yet Another Hate Crime Hoax

One of the great accidental benefits of our modern-day security state is that its omnipresent surveillance makes it harder for would-be hate-crime hoaxers to carve out a dishonest living.

Think about it: Were it not for the various videos of Jussie Smollett doing dry runs of his planned hoax, or of his Trump-supporting Nigerian assailants buying a telltale red hat and some noose-making rope at a local store, or of Smollett’s incriminating text messages to the Osundairo brothers, we’d probably think ol’ Jussie was an honest, upstanding thespian and a courageous civil rights champion. Instead, thanks to technology, we know the truth: that he’s a racial arsonist and a lying leftist homosexual dirtbag.

And so it goes with a young woman, an unnamed Muslim student who reported that she was physically assaulted by “an unknown male [who] attempted to remove her hijab,” according to a November 17 crime alert at the University of Maryland Baltimore County.

Alas, as The College Fix reports, the university has since halted its investigation into the alleged assault “pending further investigative leads.” Translation: It never happened.

The woman claimed that the attack happened in the Commons area of the university’s student center sometime between 5 p.m. and when the university sent out the alert at 6:52 p.m. Her story, though, began to unravel when UMBC Police began to investigate: “Detective Smith and I reviewed the camera footage of the area where this incident was reported to have happened,” campus officer Bruce Perry wrote in his police report. “We watched from 5 p.m. up until the point it was reported to the Commons information desk. We did not see [name redacted] on the footage during that time.”

How odd. Officer Perry then contacted the woman and asked her if she’d like to stop by and make a statement — and they haven’t heard from her since.

Ya just hate to see it.

Kidding aside, we really do hate to see this young woman’s name being redacted in official documents. It seems to us that one of the best deterrents to potential hate-crime hoaxers is the threat of public scorn and humiliation. The hate and bias investigation report labeled the incident “inconclusive,” but it seems pretty darn conclusive to us. Unfortunately, unless this hoaxer is outed and prosecuted by the authorities, she’ll get off without a scratch. And she and others like her will learn from her mistake — namely to ensure that there’s no video surveillance near the scene of their next “crime.”

Meanwhile, the UMBC Muslim Student Association said it was “shocked, disgusted, and outraged” about the assault on “one of our own sisters in Faith.”

Whatever, dudes.

If the staff at The College Fix are feeling a bit of déjà vu here, it’s understandable. Back in late 2016, a somewhat similar hoax was perpetrated by another young Muslim woman, a University of Michigan student, who told police just days after the 2016 presidential election that a white man demanded she remove her hijab or he’d set her on fire with a lighter. That, too, was a lie — and it was made even worse when gutless local prosecutors in the hard-left college town of Ann Arbor refused to file charges.

Of course, the common thread that runs through the fake hate-crime industry is that the demand far outstrips the supply. Otherwise, why would people have to fake them?

And why would even a Democrat-controlled Congress fall for one of the oldest tricks in the Muslim Brotherhood’s playbook — a bill called The Combating International Islamophobia Act, which it passed recently, ostensibly to curry favor with that body’s biggest anti-Semite, Democrat Representative Ilhan Omar?

“No House Republican voted for the bill,” our Thomas Gallatin reported, and Minority Whip Steve Scalise explained why: “Republicans firmly believe that no one should ever be attacked or denied their human rights or dignity because of their religious faith, but this rushed, partisan legislation does not represent a serious legislative effort and is instead a divisive messaging bill that is unlikely to become law.”

At least there are pockets of sanity somewhere in the Beltway.