A restaurant owned by a Pakistani-American in Texas has been defaced with bacon twice in one week.
Zaza Bar & Bites, a Muslim-owned restaurant in Galveston, Texas, fell victim to two bacon-involved vandalism incidents last Sunday, according to Eater.
The first incident involved bacon grease, which was smeared over the door handles of the restaurant. The second incident involved bacon pieces sprawled all across the front of the establishment.
Practicing Muslims abstain from consuming pork, which suggests the acts of vandalism could have been a deliberate target against the restaurant owners’ religious affiliation. The perpetrators of these acts have yet to be apprehended or identified.
Zaza Bar & Bites’ owner Asad Khan, who immigrated to the United States from Pakistan in 1993, told Eater that, in addition to the vandalism, he also has been receiving threatening phone calls telling him “to leave the country.”
“I don’t have a victim mentality,” he said. “I’m blessed to live in this country. Ninety-nine per cent of my experience here has been nothing but phenomenal.”
Khan now plans to upgrade the security arrangements of the restaurant by putting up cameras outside the restaurant’s premises.
“I feel bad for whomever did this because they’re carrying so much hate in them,” Khan said. “I will get over this. I hope they get peace.”
Bacon products have been used throughout the 2016 presidential election to target, intimidate and harass Muslims. In February, then-GOP nominee Donald Trump told a crowd of rowdy supporters a folklore story of an American general killing Muslims overseas with bullets dipped in pig’s blood.
Incidents involving hate crimes have significantly increased in US after Donald Trump’s presidential victory.
