Days after Muslims around the globe celebrated as the holy month of Ramadan came to a close, festiveness turned into uneasiness and fear for the Twin Cities Islamic community.
An attempted arson at a Minneapolis mosque Sunday evening was followed the next night by a fire at another mosque in the same neighborhood, prompting the Minneapolis Police Department to team up with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to determine whether the incidents were motivated by bias.
The back-to-back incidents are the latest in a troubling increase in attacks on the houses of worship in Minnesota, keeping Muslim communities in a state of unease.
Against the backdrop of the recent attacks and with less than four weeks left in the legislative session, members of Minnesota’s Muslim communities and advocates asked lawmakers to pass legislation that would expand reporting for bias-motivated crimes.
The attacks
On Sunday night, a man entered Masjid Omar Islamic Center inside Mall 24 with a brown bag thought to contain a gas can used to light a fire in the mosque’s bathroom. Worshippers quickly put the fire out but the man believed to have lit the fire, caught on surveillance footage, is still at-large.
The next day and just blocks away, another fire was ignited at Masjid Al-Rahma, with fire crews contending with flames on the building’s third floor and evacuating men, women and children.
No injuries were sustained in either incident.
The fires come two weeks after surveillance footage showed a man smashing the windows of Ummatul Islam, another mosque in south Minneapolis, and months after two more mosques were vandalized and robbed days apart last fall.
[image_credit]CAIR-Minnesota[/image_credit][image_caption]Remnants of a fire that was started in the bathroom of the Mall 24 Mosque.[/image_caption]
Dozens of DFL lawmakers, along with Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carver, joined their Muslim colleagues Reps. Hodan Hassan, Mohamud Noor and Samakab Hussein, as well as Sens. Zaynab Mohamed and Omar Fateh, for a Tuesday news conference to denounce the attacks and highlight efforts to combat increasing attacks on mosques statewide.
“This is the Minnesota that we want – in this room, is the real Minnesota, but out there, there is some notion that we don’t belong,” said Hassan, who represents the district containing both mosques, referring to her colleagues’ show of support. “I belong in Minnesota, but I’m also a Muslim Minnesotan and I’m also Somali American. I’m proud of all of my layers, very proud of them, and no one should be afraid to go and pray at their most sacred space.”
The aftermath
The recent uptick in attacks has brought back painful memories for Mohamed Omar, the imam and executive director of Dar al-Farooq Islamic Center. In 2017, the Bloomington mosque was firebombed by members of a white supremacist group as worshippers were preparing for early morning prayers.
“We thought we moved away from this and that chapter had become closed, but it’s very clear that in Minnesota, those who are behind the hate, they have not moved on and those who want to hurt us are still around,” he said in an interview. “For us, this is between life and death — I was in the next room when the bomb landed and God gave me a second chance — but today, seeing this right after Ramadan. It’s actually more painful.”
Emily Claire Hari masterminded the attack, driving up from Illinois with co-conspirators Michael McWhorter and Joe Morris and convincing them to throw a pipe bomb through a window of the mosque.
Omar said that a few days ago, the Bloomington Police Department reached out to him to tell him the mosque is on “high alert.” He fears that since the mosque was in the public eye due to the previous attack and Hari’s trial, they may become a target, he said.
“Imagine the police are telling you to stay alert, how safe can you feel?” Omar said. “We have to make sure that you are not going to die while you are worshiping and praying — it’s absolutely getting worse with what happened in the past.”
[image_credit]MinnPost photo by Mohamed Ibrahim[/image_credit][image_caption]State Rep. Hodan Hassan, center, speaking at a Tuesday news conference to denounce the attacks and highlight efforts to combat increasing attacks on mosques statewide.[/image_caption]
Mohamed highlighted the role of the community in helping to craft the bill, but also emphasized the community’s role in helping to prevent more bias-motivated crimes from happening by being more active in reporting them.
“When communities can be able to report accurately, then we know what’s happening and how things are happening, then we can do something about it,” she said.
Is there not a single Republican who will condemn hate crimes and support freedom of religion?
Check the more fetid areas of the internet (e.g. TwinCities.com comment sections). There, you will find out that the arson was a fake, it was a set up to garner sympathy, and anyway, freedom of religion in this country is only for “Christians.” They may not say that last part out loud, but I don’t think you will find much disagreement with it.
I’m no Repub, but I also think the recent left has it’s own serious problems with intolerance. Anyway, I can unequivocally say I condem any bias motivated attack on anyone anwhere. And, all religions should be able to do what they do freely. The religious also need to let me mercilessly mock their practices in any non violent form in all public places.
Anyway, the truth in these two recent arson attempts is they were apparently committed by a man who recently, has twice, been bailed out of jail by the MN freedom fund. 1 of the past charged events was another arson. There has also been at least one missing person report filed on his behalf in the past.
In the mosque events he set a gas can on the tiled bathroom floors and ignited these. Tile when manufactured gets fired in the 1400° plus range, gasoline fire in normal atmosphere is nowhere near these temps. This is not a very considered attempt at an arson.
All this would lead me to theorize we are dealing with a disturbed rather than ideological individual.
Unfortunately, instead of finding the help he likely needs while in the carceral setting, he’s been spun out unchecked through the courts with the help of a corporate and celebrity funded sycophantic non profit to further victimize himself and others.
This article and every other piece of coverage on this would have you believe it’s a forgone conclusion as to the attackers motivation. And, if you are honest, that’s not journalism, it’s politically motivated advocacy.
So, I’d like to offer my congratulations to prog politics, their media cheerleaders, and all institutions who’s actions are actually allowing the people to suffer while blindly fighting their boogey-isms hidden under every stone. We’ll played.
I’m impressed: not only did you get in a “both sides” red herring, but managed to make a reference to the Freedom Fund (the new bête noire), as well as fobbing the whole thing off as a “mental health” issue.
You hit today’s trifecta. Congratulations.
Actually, the guy was on a civil commitment and he is alleged to have committed the last two arsons. I am not saying hate crimes are real, but the state legislature really needs to address why someone on a commitment for mental health issues has such lax oversight, it is a large issue that goes ignored.
Fobbing a hate crime off on mental health issues diminishes the significance of the term and amounts to a partial pass for bigotry.
“I am not saying hate crimes are real”
Yes, we know.
“instead of finding the help he likely needs while in the carceral setting”
Do you intend to imply that such help is available? As I understand it, such help is not. These ‘disturbed’ individuals are ignored, or if they cause problems, thrown into solitary. From a societal perspective it would be far better for all parties involved if they received the help they need before getting sucked into the criminal justice system.
You assume they’re different people.
On a like track Minnesota republican senators Drazkowski, gruenhagen, etc spewed antisemitic dog whistles during the Senate voting bill debate last night, claiming the “foreign influence” on election contributions of George Soros and Mark Zuckerberg. George Soros was born in Hungary and was able to hid his Jewishness from the nazis as a child. Soros became a naturalized citizen in 1961. Soros made billions of dollars as an American hedge fund manager. He donates to progressive causes and politicians. He is a frequent target of trump and others antisemitism. Zuckerberg is an American born Jew and CEO of facebook/META, also targetted for white supremacists’ antisemitic conspiracy theories. Our communities shouldn’t be subjected to hate speech on OUR Minnesota Legislature.
George Soros and Mark Zuckerberg are billionaires who spend hundreds of millions of dollars to skew the political makeup of this country. Zuckerberg alone spent over 400 million dollars during the 2020 election cycle on democrat voter groups. Soros has supported the prosecutors in this country who have failed to prosecute this nation’s violent criminals. Their religion is irrelevant and is not connected in any way to their actions which are fundamentally unAmerican. Only the recipients of their largess seem to be aware of their religion from what I’ve noticed.
Sure dude, cool story.
It’s un-American to attempt to contribute to electoral campaigns or voter groups? Or to groups advocating criminal justice reform? I thought the First Amendment still was in force, even for people with whom Dennis Tester disagrees. Last time I checked, it didn’t matter what your political opinion was, you still had the right to act on it peacefully.
The imagery you use – “spend hundreds of millions of dollars to skew the political makeup of this country” – sounds like an outtake from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
The Mark Zuckerberg-funded Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL) sent 400 million dollars to government election offices under the ruse of ‘helping to conduct the 2020 election’. There were existing election laws that outlawed this type of corruption, but corrupt attorneys found loop holes in the laws so it could be pulled off. This was done all around the country almost exclusively in deep blue counties. Republican strongholds were mostly intentionally ignored, but some small Republican areas were given money to give the appearance of being ‘fair’. The CTCL analyzed data after the election and concluded CTCL grants in key areas of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin bought Biden the 2020 election. So it turns out the filthy rich bought the election. So blatant was this backdoor method of buying the election that Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Missouri, North Dakota, Tennessee and Texas have all passed laws banning this type of corruption.
Molly Ball wrote an article in Time magazine describing the underhanded technique used to change election laws in various states in “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election”. Numerous dem/libs chastised her for spilling the beans. One of the ways they influenced state officials, local election officials and judges was fear mongering. The first lines in her story are this: “The nation was braced for chaos. Liberal groups had vowed to take to the streets, planning hundreds of protests across the country.” The violent Summer of Love riots were still fresh in everyone’s mind. Throw in the claim that the pandemic restrictions made voting unreasonably difficult and it was the perfect storm. She wasn’t even shy in using the words “shadow” and “secret” in the title. Soviet style techniques.
Yes indeed. And the “corruption” was so insidious, it couldn’t even be explained!
When were all these meticulously planned protests cowing the nation into terror supposed to occur? And I wasn’t even informed!!
The nonsense you guys read and immediately believe is quite remarkable. Anything to distract you from understanding you are part of a minority political faction.
The particular nonsense Mr. Tester quotes this time talks about concerted efforts to protect the integrity of the election system. Apparently, an election that reflected the will of the American public is more than the right-wing can bear.
And he is perfectly willing to credit claims of election “fear mongering” by left wing mobs after the only mob action the country saw was a treasonous insurrection orchestrated, instigated and carried out by the American RIGHT.
Where were the left wing mobs during the four days the country waited to have Biden declared the winner? They certainly took their sweet time in appearing!
“Finding a loophole” is another term for “taking advantage of existing laws.” Tax accountants do it on a daily, if not hourly, basis. The fact that red states have changed their laws does nothing to convince me otherwise.
“The violent Summer of Love riots were still fresh in everyone’s mind.”
The Summer of Love was in 1967, or as we say, 56 years ago. It’s only “fresh in one’s mind” if one is still wondering why they took Ed Sullivan off the air.
The suspect was bailed out twice by The Freedom Fund.
antisemitism only happens when Republicans criticize a leftist who happens to be jewish. when a leftist criticizes a conservative jew it’s bravely speaking truth to power. it’s laughably predictable.
It’s laughable all right. Mostly wrong, but laughable.