Muslim teenager thrashed over Obama's win

NEW YORK - A black Muslim teenager says he was beaten on Tuesday night, the Election Day, by four white men furious over Barack Obama's election as the next US President, according to media reports.

Ali Kamara, 17, was walking home when four white men leaped from a car and started kicking and smashing him with a baseball bat near his home in Staten Island, a New York suburb.

"I see the car coming. They looked at me and said, 'Obama' They were not happy. They had hoodies on. They started hitting me with bats and my body started vibrating," Kamara, a high school student, was quoted as saying.

Kamara said he tried to cover the back of his head, and broke away from his attackers. He managed to jump over a neighbour's fence to hide.

When the attackers finally drove off, Kamara crept back to his home.

"I was bleeding all over. I did not know them," the teen said. "I think it was a racist crime."

A New York Police Department spokesman said the department's Hate Crime Task Force was investigating the incident as a bias crime.

Kamara's family moved to Staten Island from Liberia in 2000.

Meanwhile, a prominent national Islamic civil rights and advocacy group today called on the FBI to launch a hate crime investigation into an Election Night assault on a New York Muslim.

"This incident should be of great concern to all Americans, not only because of the apparent bias motive, but because of its possible negative impact on equal participation in the political process," said Aliya Latif, civil rights director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations CAIR's New York chapter.

Earlier this week, CAIR called on the FBI and local police to investigate a paintball attack on a Maryland mosque as a possible hate crime. Other acts of vandalism have targeted Muslim individuals and Islamic institutions in Illinois, Nebraska and nationwide.