Two kids were watching television in their Manchester home when a brick smashed through the window, missing the boy's head by a hair's breadth. A bloodied pig's head soon followed.
Their offence? Being in a Muslim home.
"The kids are absolutely petrified," their father, Ajaz Mahmood, was quoted as saying. "They're both asking questions. How do you explain that to a 6-year-old," he told Buzzfeed.
"I thought it was absolutely disgusting"
Mahmood explained that his wife and their four children were at home when the attack happened on Saturday night.
His 14-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter were in the living room when the brick and pig's head came flying through the window.
He rushed home from work after his wife called him in tears, with "hysterical screaming" in the background.
"She was screaming, hysterical. I had to calm her down," he told Buzzfeed. "I only realized when I got into my front room there was a pig's head there, wedged between the arms of the sofa, wrapped in plastic. I thought it was absolutely disgusting."
Manchester police are now investigating the incident as an "appalling hate crime" for which they suspect a man about 18 years old to be responsible.
Mahmood said that he cannot think of a reason to justify the attack, saying, "I'm just a normal bloke who just goes to work, tries to look after his family. I've not got any enemies, I'm not overly religious."
"I am not sure whether it is racial or Islamaphobic," he told the Manchester Evening News, wondering whether the attackers had mistaken their house for somebody else's.
Parts of pigs and pork bacon have been used in anti-Muslim hate crimes on several occasions in reference to the fact that Islam forbids followers of the faith from consuming said meat.
"They're both asking questions. How do you explain that to a 6-year-old?"
Although no one was injured, the family is still shaken by the incident. Mahmood said that his children have been asking difficult questions about why the family had been targeted.
"My daughter is only a child, she doesn't understand what's gone on," he said. "She's asking questions [...] How do you explain that to a 6-year-old? What do you say to them? I told them they're just mindless people that have done that."
#Islamophobia
"Wrong on so many levels"
Does anti-Muslim extremism ring a bell?
By the way, pigs are not kryptonite to Muslims
