CAIRO, March 24, 2006 (IslamOnline.net) – Muslim students at the University of Toronto at Mississauga (UTM) have been suffering growing racism and verbal assaults, a local Canadian newspaper reported on Friday, March 24.

"It keeps happening over and over again, and it needs to stop," Shaila Kibria, vice-president of the UTM's Students' Administrative Council, told the Canadian Mississauga News Online.

Kibria said a female student was forcefully shoved in the chest and told to "go back" to her country and "bomb it".

"Since then, there have been a dozen more incidents in which racist comments have been directed towards Muslim students at the school's Mississauga Rd. campus."

Similar attacks were also reported at the Toronto campus.

Kibria said he was told by fellow students that they had been insulted by other students asking if their underarms are hairy.

Another female student reported that she was called a terrorist by a group of students last week, Kibria added.

The number of Canadian Muslims has increased dramatically over the last decade, according to a national census.

Canadian Muslims make 1.9% of Canada's some 32.8 million people, according to the CIA World Factbook.

Islam has become the number one non-Christian faith in Canada.

Muslim student blamed the university administration for the rise of racist attacks against them, saying it failed to even publicly condemn the racist practices.

Fahad Shaikh, the head of UTM's Muslim Students Association, warned Muslims may face more violent attacks unless the university takes further action to eliminate hate attacks and crimes.

Comparing reaction to attacks against Muslims and the circulation of anti-Semitic pamphlets on the campus last November, Kibria said the university was quick to issue a public statement to denounce the pamphlets, but refrained from doing the same on Muslims.

The UTM's Students' Administrative Council and other student groups have called on the university to make a statement denouncing the recent anti-Muslim incidents.

The council has also asked the university to give a directive telling students and staff to show respect to Muslims and refrain from attacking their faith, said Kibria.

Nearly 100 Muslim students staged a rally on Thursday, March 23, to protest attacks against them, the paper said.

The Muslim groups have also called for looking into a series of posters that have appeared on campus showing a picture of Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) with a bomb in his turban.

The drawing is among twelve blasphemous others that were first published by Danish daily Jyllands-Posten in September and reprinted by European newspapers on claims of freedom of expression.