A few years ago I noted the sharp growth in acid attacks in the UK.

While acid attacks are commonplace in certain Muslim countries, they were not normative to western ones. Until immigration reshaped the UK.

Acid attacks in London rose from 162 in 2012 to 454 last year. There have already been 199 acid attacks this year. Five acid attacks just happened in London in the space of little more than an hour.

Newham is the London borough with the highest number of acid attacks. It also has the second-highest percentage of Muslims in the UK. 398 acid attacks occurred in 5 years in the area named as “the most ethnically diverse district in England and Wales”. 33% of Newham consists of non-UK passport holders.

But surely that’s some sort of random coincidence. 

Except that the place with the third-highest number of acid attacks is Tower Hamlets. Tower Hamlets is a Muslim no-go zone. It has one of the smallest native British populations in the country. 35% of the population is Muslim. Most of those are Bangladeshis with a healthy sprinkling of Somalis. 

There were 84 acid attacks in what has been dubbed “The Islamic Republic of Tower Hamlets”.

Also, entirely by coincidence, Bangladesh has the highest rate of acid attacks in the world.

This may now be the highest-profile current acid attack in the US. And it involves a Pakistani Muslim young woman.

As CBS2’s Carolyn Gusoff reports, Nafiah Ikram is bravely speaking out after an incomprehensible attack.

On March 17, as she arrived home from work, walking from her car, she saw a man watching from the corner. He ran up to her and threw a cup of liquid in her face.

“I started to cry and, like, I was panicking. I was like, ‘Dad, someone threw something in my face!’ And he was like, ‘Oh my God, it’s acid,’” Nafiah said.

Acid burns are seared into her Arlington Avenue driveway, as are burns in her eye and throat.

“She was in the hospital for three weeks, and she’s still not able to eat properly. She can’t see anything good. Only one eye is working,” said her father Sheikh Ikram.

“I can just see colors, but that’s it,” Nafiah said.

“It’s been a horrible nightmare for us,” said her mother Sherina Mohammed.

The attack is not incomprehensible. It’s horrifying and evil, but commonplace in Muslim countries. The media keeps feeding the idea of a hate crime, but acid attacks are not how Americans commit hate crimes. This particular methodology, a cup of acidic liquid in the face, is typical of acid attacks in Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc… and is generally done to young women by men for reasons that are horribly evil, but not especially obscure.

The media obviously doesn’t want to go there. It’s much easier to keep suggesting that it’s Islamophobia rather than there might be something wrong with cultures where acid attacks are commonplace.