RTR4YEVE
Attendees sit next to a poster as speakers from different faiths speak at an interfaith rally titled "Love is Stronger than Hate" at the Islamic Community Center in Phoenix, Arizona, June 1, 2015. Reuters

A public transit worker and an off-duty police officer were each the victims of recent hate crimes in New York City because they are Muslim, according to reports.

The latest instance was when a Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) employee was called a terrorist and pushed down a flight of stairs in a major commuter rail hub in Manhattan on Monday. Sosa Salama was wearing a hijab and her MTA uniform Monday when a man confronted her on the train heading to work, NBC New York reported Monday. On the train, the assailant yelled “You are a terrorist and you shouldn’t be working for the city” to Salama, a 45-year-old mother of four originally from Egypt. When she exited the train at Grand Central Station, she was pushed her down the stairs, injuring her ankle and knee.

Days earlier, off-duty NYPD Officer Aml Elsokary was threatened by a man who reportedly said he would cut her throat on Saturday, the Huffington Post reported Monday. Christopher Nelson was arrested Sunday and charged with harassing Elsokary, who was in Brooklyn with her son at the time of the alleged incident. Nelson, 36, allegedly called Elsokary an “ISIS b***h” and threatened to slit her throat when she intervened on him verbally threatening her teenage son.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio addressed the uptick in hate crimes in New York City since Election Day, including racially inspired graffiti emerging in public places throughout the city, the New York Post reported.

“I was sick to my stomach when I heard that one of our officers was subjected to threats and taunting simply because of her faith,” de Blasio said at a news conference Monday.

Hate crimes in New York City have risen 115 percent since Election Day with the NYPD reporting 43 cases through Sunday compared to 20 in the same time period last year.

Swastikas were found painted inside of a New York City commuter train Saturday. In Mineola village on Long Island, red swastikas and the words “Make American White Again” were also discovered spray-painted on a home Wednesday. Ku Klux Klan recruitment materials were also handed out in two Long Island commuter rail stations, according to local reports last month.

"We've had an uptick in hate crimes, actually a little bit more than an uptick," NYPD Commissioner James O’ Neill told a New York radio station last month while saying he was greatly concerned by the recent pattern. "We're up 31 percent from last year. We had at this time last year 250, this year we have 328, specifically against the Muslim population in New York City — we went up from 12 to 25, and anti-Semitic is up, too, by 9 percent from 102 to 111."

Hate crimes against Muslims in the U.S. rose by 67 percent in 2015, the Southern Poverty Law Center reported last month. The racially-motivated incidents had previously increased by 14 percent in 2014 from 2013.

In response to the wave of hate crimes since the election, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the creation of a state police unit specifically for protecting civil rights.

The increase in hate crimes targeting Muslims could be attributed in part to rhetoric throughout Donald Trump's presidential campaign in which he associated Islam with the Islamic State group's terror attacks worldwide. Trump recently blamed U.S. immigration policies for last month's Ohio State University campus violence at the hands of a Somali refugee. The president-elect's proposal of implementing Muslim registries throughout the county has been compared to the creation of internment camps for Japanese-Americans during World War II.

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