A mosque in Fairfax County suffered thousands of dollars in damage. News4's Megan McGrath has the story.
$60,000 in damage! An attack on any religious establishment is an attack on all religious establishments.
Mosque in Fairfax County Vandalized
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By Megan McGrath
Construction crews should be putting the finishing touches on the Mubarak Blessed Mosque in Chantilly. Instead, they are repairing the work of vandals.
Sometime between Sunday evening and 6 a.m. Monday morning, the mosque was pelted with stones and masonry blocks. Nearly all the custom made windows and glass doors on the first floor were shattered. Damage has been estimated at $60,000.
Investigators found beer and liquor bottles in the woods behind the mosque, and they believe teenagers may be responsible.
“It is very sad,” said the mosque’s general secretary, Usman Ghumman. “But at the same time, our community is very resilient. We have asked our community members to fervently pray that we are able to overcome this hurdle.”
Mubarak Blessed Mosque has been under construction for a year, and was scheduled to open in just weeks.
Jerrold Foltz, pastor at the Wellspring United Church of Christ, said acts like this are an affront to area’s entire religious community. “Its an insult to the whole religious establishment,” Foltz said, “whether its a church or a mosque or a synagogue.”
Investigators say there is no evidence that it is a hate crime – nothing was taken and no graffiti was left behind. However, because of the extent of the damage, those responsible face felony charges.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has asked the FBI to investigate the possibility of a bias motive in the incident.
February 1st, 2012 at 11:34 am
Asses >:( but given the beer bottles, they may just be drunken a-holes, and not actual bigots. I hope they catch whomever did this.
February 1st, 2012 at 11:56 am
The Anti-Muslim crowd will either downplay this, accuse the Mosque’s congregation of doing it themselves to garner sympathy from the public at large or do as some of the more extreme Anti-Islam individual and groups have done in the past when similar crimes are committed: they will applaud the act and call for more of the same.
February 1st, 2012 at 1:13 pm
Where did they come up with “Partying gone bad”excuse just because there are beer bottles?? Instead of throwing pork like they did at other mosques, it’s beer bottles since it’s forbidden in Islam. It’s always a new mosque that’s targeted. Most definitely a hate crime! A huge Muslim community lives there. I will pray for them.
February 1st, 2012 at 2:30 pm
Something like this seems to be happening in US, UK or Europe (not to mention Occupied Palestine Territory) on a weekly basis at least, and many more go unreported. It’s not as if people are not being arrested & prosecuted for these crimes either. From Roger Stockham in US to EDL member (and serving soldier) Simon Beech in the UK, many perpetrators are being caught, yet barely a murmur in the national mainstream media. If these were churches & perps were Muslim we all know what the reaction would be. I’ve said it before, it scares me to imagine what may happen before something is done to address this trend, and we’ve already witnessed the first* terrorist atrocity that this ideology has spawned.
*First according to the narrow criteria used by the MSM. Yet some still prefer to call him a mass murderer or psychopath due to him not being one of ‘the other’.
February 1st, 2012 at 3:32 pm
1. Under American federal law, Spencer ~ and whoever else is named as inspiration for the Danish massacre ~ could be held to account for their part in that massacre of America’s allies. That means that Denmark could extradite them.
2. This is a war of one religion against another, although neither a Crusade nor a Jihad. The loons are just one element ~ agitprop and psychological warfare.
3. Incitement of felony is not protected by the First Amendment.
4. Publishers of the felonious incitements could also be prosecuted.
I’d suggest no more republication of incitatory rhetoric from the loons or anyone else. Coverage of the results of such incitation should be sufficient.
My two cents.
February 1st, 2012 at 3:37 pm
AA
they say its not a hate crime. Jeezzzz i guess love can make’ya do crazy things
February 2nd, 2012 at 9:05 am
I think all mosques should have security cameras.
February 4th, 2012 at 1:54 am
wow
these vandals are a waste of oxygen, i hope the authorities catch them and are punished accordingly
February 4th, 2012 at 8:03 am
khushboo writes: I think all mosques should have security cameras.
No, khushboo … trained guards, armed and, where possible, badges and arrest powers (local police, sheriff’s deputies, etc.). Two stories:
Around 1987: Arriving home, my wife and children went in the front door while I parked the station wagon near the back door further into the driveway. I caught a teenage boy coming out the back door, carrying our .22 rifle and a bag of swag.
I hog-tied him in the living room and stuck the muzzle of a lever-action .30/30 in his mouth. He said “Hey! I have rights! I said “When the police get here, you have rights. Until then, you’re mine, your fingerprints are on that .22 [rifle], and I have rights. An armed burglar in an occupied dwelling doesn’t have any.” Unseen by the boy, my wife went upstairs and called 911, reporting a burglar in custody.
He laid there tasting the cold steel of what he thought was a loaded and cocked hunting rifle for about twenty minutes, while I argued with my wife about making a mess on our hardwood floors. The police cleared 83 burglaries to which he confessed, feeding his crack habit. They told us that those twenty minutes were probably the best thing that had ever happened to him.
Around 1983: The brothers caught a teenager inside the storage building next to the mosque, about midnight. They strapped his right forearm to a chopping block and started sharpening a two-foot-long machete. Every time they tested the sharpness of the machete ~ trying to clean-cut a hanging sheet of newspaper ~ it just wouldn’t leave a razor-like cut, so the sharpening went on all night, with laughing and cracking jokes about how he would have to learn to forge checks with his left hand and other black humor. When the eastern sky started getting light, the brothers went next door to make the dawn prayer. Somehow the kid managed to free himself and got away.
Around 1972: The police found no evidence linking another story to the muslims, but it concerned the homosexual rape of a young muslim in prison. You don’t want to hear that story, but no convict so much as touched a muslim in that prison system for the next fifteen years.
Police investigate crimes that have already been committed. The way to prevent arson or vandalism attacks on mosques is to post guards around the clock, trained to make “citizens’ arrests” to stop a crime in progress.
You can’t find paradise in America. You have to build it.
February 7th, 2012 at 12:09 pm
Compared to what is happening to all other religions and their houses of worship in the Islamic world; bombings, mass murder, burning houses of worship to the ground, etc., this is nothing.
Nothing.