Two Islamic houses of worship were attacked and vandalized just after New Year’s in a clear attempt to intimidate the local Muslim populations.
The South Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations reported that officials arriving prior to worship Jan. 2 found bullet holes in the walls of the Masjid An-Noor Islamic School, a mosque and school in Miami, Fla. At roughly the same time, worshippers arriving at the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh found red paint splashed across the building’s front steps.
CAIR’s national communications director, Ibrahim Hooper, pleaded for “local, state and national law enforcement authorities to investigate possible bias motives for these incidents.”
Muslims have been frequently targeted with racist oppression and often-violent hate crimes, aggravated by the silent complicity of the state if not its direct involvement. Since Sept. 11, 2001, the government and the media have greatly intensified their racist demonization of Arabs and Muslims to erode popular opposition to U.S. imperialist policies in the Middle East and elsewhere.
