Man tells group ‘I’m mocking your religion,’ calls Muhammad a ‘pedophile’
The nation’s largest Muslim civil rights group is calling on law enforcement to prosecute a man who was seen in a viral video praying over a group of teens who were gathered in prayer outside of a Texas coffee shop.
The Texas chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Texas) called on law enforcement Wednesday to investigate the alleged assault and harassment of Muslim youth praying outside Original Mocha Coffee, a Yemeni coffee shop in Murphy, located northeast of Dallas, as a possible hate crime.
Video posted online shows an unidentified man confronting a group of more than a dozen teens standing outside the store, bowing their heads and then kneeling on the ground in public prayer. In the video, the man — a white male in his 40s or 50s — stretches out his arm over the teens and says, “Duck, duck, goose. I’m mocking your religion because you’re bowing toward a stupid pedophile’s grave.”
As he continues circling the group, he adds, “You need Jesus.”
Despite the teens ignoring him, the man begins to pray a modified version of what’s commonly known as the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from Islam. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.”
After the video went viral, CAIR-DFW Executive Director Mustafaa Carroll called for police to investigate the incident as a “possible assault and hate crime.”
“This disturbing incident is a clear example of anti-Muslim hate and religious intimidation. No young person should be harassed, mocked or targeted with bigotry simply for practicing their faith,” Carroll said in a statement Wednesday. “… These young people should also be congratulated for maintaining their composure during this shameful harassment.”
He said CAIR-Texas urges community members who experience or witness anti-Muslim harassment to report incidents to law enforcement and contact CAIR for legal assistance.
The video was shared on social media by Islamic scholar Yasir Qadhi, who earlier this year spearheaded a failed effort to establish a Muslim-only city outside Dallas.
Qadhi highlighted the incident in a Nov. 11 post, calling it “deplorable to see high school students harassed while praying in public, treated like a spectacle as others laugh and record.”
A resident scholar at the East Plano Islamic Center (EPIC) located about 20 minutes north of Dallas, Qadhi was one of the key promoters of EPIC City and EPIC Ranches, an ambitious project launched in conjunction with the Plano mosque in April 2024.
Those plans were shelved following a federal civil rights investigation into the project. The U.S. Department of Justice announced in June that the investigation was dropped after EPIC developers pledged to make the project inclusive for all residents.
It’s not clear when the video was captured, or whether the Islamic prayer gathering was organized by Original Mocha Coffee, which bills itself as an “authentic Yemeni coffee shop” and features images and video on its Instagram page with men in traditional Islamic garb drinking coffee.
The Christian Post contacted both CAIR-Texas and Original Mocha Coffee for comment Wednesday.
The prayer video went viral just weeks after Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, filed legislation that, if passed, would ban all foreign nationals who observe Islamic law, known as Sharia, from entering the U.S. or from remaining in the country.
Under the “Preserving a Sharia-Free America Act,” any non-citizen who is an adherent of Sharia law would be considered deportable, as well as have his or her immigration status revoked.
Roy’s proposed legislation was followed by another bill introduced last week that would eliminate tax-exempt status for CAIR and other “extremist groups with close ties to terrorist organizations.”
Federal prosecutors in 2007 named CAIR and two other Islamic organizations as “unindicted co-conspirators and/or joint venturers” in a criminal conspiracy to support Hamas financially. In 2008, the FBI ended contacts with CAIR because of concern with its continuing terrorist ties.
Earlier this year, Rep. Randy Fine, R-Fla., introduced a bill seeking to designate CAIR as a foreign terrorist organization. The organization is already deemed a terrorist group by the United Arab Emirates.
