CAIRO – The fact that three young American Muslim women were attacked, cursed and spat on by a man on a New Jersey train and no one stepped to defend them has stirred angry reactions, amidst a surge in anti-Muslim rhetoric and anti-Muslim hate crimes across the country.

“To have an older man use such vulgar words (I can’t personally get myself to type them out here, even using code characters), in broad daylight, as everyone looks on and pretends to ignore what’s happening, is so traumatizing and humiliating that words fail to express my anger,” Dr. Yasir Qadhi, an American Muslim scholar, wrote on Facebook.

“These are *our* sisters, *our* mothers, *our* daughters. They take the daily brunt of Islamophobia because the loud-mouthed jerks don’t have the courage and guts to attack men, and also because our sisters are more identifiably Muslim than most of us are.”

Dr. Qadhi was commenting on the attack on three Muslim female college students while abroad a New Jersey train.

Three Muslim students, 21-year-old Yasmeen Alsaker, 21-year-old Sara Ebrahim and 25-year-old Tania Khaliq, were all wearing hijabs when Patrick Pietropaolo, 62, shouted several obscene slurs at them.

“Funny story happened today,” Alsaker wrote Thursday in a Facebook post. “I finished school and took the lightrail to get to [Newark] penn station with my two Muslim hijaby friends. We sat down, a man was sitting behind us. He started cursing us out. My friend turned around to see whats going on, and then turned back. The man stood up and said: why are you staring at me ha? Why are you staring at me you F***ing muslim B**ch, and then he spit on her.”

She added that “no one in the light rail said anything.”

Pietropaolo allegedly called Ebrahim a “fucking Muslim bitch.” She recalled that he also used the words “motherfucker” and “cunt.”

“I didn’t stop staring at him,” she told Huffington Post. “We thought he was going to really going to attack us.”

The train operated called for assistance from the New Jersey Transit Police Department, according to the police spokeswoman

“They really were treating us so good,” Ebrahim said of the officers, who took the women to the police station to file a report. “They calmed us down.”

Pietropaolo, 62, of Newark, was arrested for the attack on Thursday and charged with simple assault, bias intimidation, theft of service (for not paying the train fare) and resisting arrest, a New Jersey Transit Police spokeswoman said.

He was taken to the Essex County Jail, where bail was set at $15,000.

Worsening Atmosphere

The attack on the young students comes amidst a surge in anti-Muslim rhetoric and anti-Muslim hate crimes across the country.

“I was sitting in the police station and just thinking that this is just the beginning of something horrible,” Alsaker wrote in her Facebook post.

“If Donald Trump wins, this will basically become legal, people today saw us going through this and did NOTHING, the man literally stood up and spit, like WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU WAITING FOR!”

Ebrahim, a US citizen who was born in Egypt, said the incident has left her shaken.

“I’m feeling awful,” she said, noting that she started “crying out of the blue” during a tutoring session on Friday.

“I’m used to people looking at me on the street,” Ebrahim said, referring to what it can be like to walk around while wearing a hijab. “But I don’t want to get used to people attacking me.”

“I feel in this country, I’m odd,” she continued. “People look at us as if we are aliens. I feel like I don’t belong here. Sometimes I don’t wanna be here… I’m tired of being odd.”

Muslims make up 1% of America’s 322 million population, according to Pew Research center.

The attack comes amid increasing anti-Muslim sentiments flared by Republican presidential candidates, such as Donald Trump and Dr. Ben Carson.

Trump’s views on immigration have sparked controversy nationwide, especially his proposal to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the US.

Ebrahim cried while explaining that many of her Muslim friends were too frightened to continue wearing the hijab after the terrorist attacks in Paris in November.

“I am tired of the hypocrisy,” she added, explaining that you can’t say the US has freedom while “telling me to dress a certain way.”

“You can’t come and judge me,” she said. “If I respect you, you have to respect me.”