Amid what is now an epidemic of fake hate crimes there comes a strange and peculiar incident, which bears all the signs of being yet another hate hoax.

Pro-terror, pro-sharia activist Linda Sarsour has raised $110,000 and counting on the alleged beating of a Muslim woman in Columbus, Ohio – an area very heavily populated with Muslims, where a young Muslim woman, Rifqa Bary, had to flee for her life ten years ago after she said her father threatened to kill her for converting to Christianity, and one mosque has a history of terror ties.

On Sunday morning, Sarsour tweeted: “Please support Rahma, who was brutally beaten yesterday by a white male in Columbus, OH. This is unacceptable. http://www.launchgood.com/Rahma”

Sarsour alleged that Rahma Warsame of Columbus was beaten into unconsciousness for standing up to a white supremacist. The true story, one eyewitness claims, is that Warsame was part of a violent mob seeking to defend a woman who was beating a child in full public view. 

According to Launchgood, a Muslim crowdfunding site Sarsour used to raise money, the Somali-American Warsame “was brutally beaten by a white man as she came to the defense of another sister.” The fundraiser description claims Warsame suffered “four missing teeth, a badly swollen face, busted lips and a swollen nose.”

In a few short hours, Sarsour raised $50,000 on Launchgood. The page currently boasts more than $111,000 in donations, brought in with no significant publicity.

By comparison, a crowdfunding campaign dedicated to the support of the five-year-old girl who was raped by Muslim migrants took a full year to reach $80,000.

While this crowdfunding page was receiving a huge number of donations with no publicity, the media coverage that there initially was on this case suddenly disappeared, without explanation. Columbus’ ABC6 did a story on it, headlined “Family of Muslim woman calling alleged assault a ‘hate crime,’” but a couple of short hours after it went online, it disappeared. It wasn’t retracted; the space where it was now bears the notice, “Hmmm, we couldn’t find the page you were looking for.”

Aside from this mysteriously vanished ABC6 story, I initially only found two articles about the case. One was on the Muslim site bartamaha.com. The other is on a far-left site called CarbonatedTV, which states that “the victim said the man was interviewed by the police but released without charges.” It also notes that the Hamas-tied Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is involved in the case, quoting Jennifer Nimer, executive director of CAIR-Columbus: “The fact that the perpetrator was not taken into custody and was not charged raises serious concerns and sends a very dangerous message.” The national CAIR site also contains a press release about this alleged incident.

A rally that had been scheduled for Warsame on Monday was canceled, also only a few short hours after it was announced. The Columbus Underground page announcing the rally now bears the cryptic explanation: “This rally is being postponed per the request of family lawyer. The family and friends are further discussing it and will announce a new date for this event soon.” 

The publicity for the incident appeared to evaporate as conflicting accounts of the incident began to surface.

First, Columbus police issued a statement refusing to acknowledge the incident as a “hate crime.” According to the NBC affiliate WKYC, they could not arrest anyone at the scene “due to the lack of physical evidence and conflicting stories” by everyone involved. They noted that they arrived on the scene not in response to any reports of hate crimes, but because multiple citizens had reported public child abuse and potential child abduction. WKYC notes that police did not name anyone involved. 

The Daily Caller reported Monday, before the police statement came out, a version of the story that corresponded with the WKYC report. The outlet claimed that there was another victim in the incident: a woman named Samantha Morales, who said that “Sarsour and CAIR have the story all wrong, including the allegations that racial epithets were hurled at Warsame.” 

Morales says that Sarsour and CAIR have ignored another major piece of the story: Morales herself was transported to the emergency room by ambulance because of the injuries she sustained in Saturday’s melee.

“They’re not even mentioning that I was the victim. They came at me. The woman that’s in the hospital is part of the group that was aggressing me,” Morales said. 

Morales stated, according to the Daily Caller, that the incident began when a “woman of African heritage who lives in her apartment complex was yelling at and hitting her son with a shoe.” Morales tried to intervene, whereupon “she was attacked first by a mob of men and women, including Warsame, following a neighborhood argument involving a woman and her son.”  

Said Morales: “What happened is not what she is claiming. The woman that is in the hospital, I feel sorry for her, but she is one of the women who was kicking and hitting me after I got tased.”

“Four or five different men” assaulted Morales before someone used a taser on her, she claims. Then a group of women joined in the assault, both Morales and [Ricky] Boyce said.

…

A police report taken of the incident backs up Morales’ and Boyce’s claims. According to the report, a Muna Warsame had a Taser at the scene of the incident.

It was Morales’ boyfriend, Boyce, who according to Warsame hurled racial epithets at her. Morales and Boyce deny this.

With major challenges to Warsame’s story surfacing, many questions remain. Where is all this money for Rahma Warsame coming from? With Warsame exposed, what will it now go to fund? Why aren’t there more journalists who are pursuing the questionable aspects of this story and challenging Sarsour’s version of the incident and the fundraising efforts based thereon? Would doing that be “Islamophobic”?

Pamela Geller is the President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of PamelaGeller.com and author of The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. Follow her on Twitter here. Like her on Facebook here.