WASHINGTON, 14 December 2004 — Federal authorities are investigating whether attacks last week on two mosques in Massachusetts and Arizona were anti-Muslim hate crimes.
Earlier this week, the Al-Baqi Islamic Center in Springfield, Mass., burned to the ground. Arson investigators have not yet determined the cause of the fire, but said the blaze was not sparked by electrical problems.
Across the continent, an investigation has begun over a fire that destroyed a Phoenix-area mosque. The blaze broke out early Tuesday morning in the Al Sadiq Mosque in Glendale, Arizona.
The burning of the mosques has sent shock waves throughout the Muslim-American community.
“We are very alarmed at the rate of these incidents, but I’m confident that the authorities will find the answers to the question regarding these crimes,” said Nihad Awad, executive director of the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations.
In response to these attacks, CAIR’s legal director, Arsalan Iftikhar, wrote to the US Department of Justice Civil Rights Division saying: “Given the recent pattern of incidents targeting Islamic institutions in the United States, and the Muslim community’s concerns about the rising tide of Islamophobic rhetoric in our society, I would respectfully request that the Department of Justice assist in ruling out the possibility that these most recent incidents were bias-motivated hate crimes.”
In late November, CAIR called on the FBI to assist in the investigation of a fire at a Virginia gas station that may have been motivated by anti-Muslim or anti-Arab bias. Racist graffiti such as “F*** Arab go home” was left in the vicinity of the Sikh-owned station. (Since the 9/11 terror attacks, a number of Sikh men who wear turbans have been targeted because they were mistaken for Muslims.)
Awad said other incidents targeting American Islamic institutions have occurred nationwide in recent months.
In a brief compiled by CAIR, recent attacks occurred in Fargo, North Dakota, where vandals smeared feces on a mosque. In the neighboring state of Minnesota, two Islamic centers were also vandalized.
In Texas, firebombs were thrown at an El Paso mosque. Also in Texas, a man was arrested for threatening an El Paso Islamic center; an arson suspect was arrested at the scene of a fire at a Muslim business in San Antonio and vandals scrawled racist graffiti on the interior of a Lubbock mosque. A homemade bomb exploded in the mailbox of a Houston Islamic center.
In Washington, D.C., a Muslim prayer area at American University was vandalized. Earlier this year in Florida, vandals wrote “Kill all Muslims” inside the Islamic Community Center in the Tampa suburb of Lutz. The FBI is also investigating vandalism and threatening messages targeting the Islamic Community of Southwest Florida in Charlotte Harbor.
In Missouri, vandals painted a Nazi swastika and the word “die” on an addition under construction at the Islamic Foundation of Greater St. Louis. Three Miami Islamic centers were vandalized.
In August of last year, investigators determined that a blaze at the Islamic Center of Savannah in Savannah, Ga., was an act of arson. In 2003, a Florida man was sentenced to more than 12 years in federal prison for plotting to attack some 50 Islamic institutions in that state. Similar incidents have occurred in a number of other states, particularly since the 9/11 terror attacks.
“We see more anti-Muslim reporting than prior to Sept. 11, the Afghani war and Iraq war,” said Awad. “Negative reporting gives ground to anti-Muslim incidents.”
“Lack of information is bad, but misinformation is a dangerous weapon,” said Nihad. “We’re now living in an environment where there is a lot of negative information about Islam and Muslims, so we are very sensitive when there are incidents such as the burning of these mosques. We think these attacks are perpetrated by bigots and Islamophobes, and we need these to be investigated thoroughly. I hope our fears are wrong.”
Awad said more Americans are accepting anti-Muslim stereotypes and propaganda as facts, which “gives legitimacy to anti-Muslim incidents. He applauded police and federal authorities for their work: “To their credit, in many places they have opened investigations and sometimes were able to locate, arrest and prosecute people who instigated these attacks.”
