A mosque that has seen repeated attacks in the past was the scene of another arson attack on Saturday. (via. Google Translate)

A police spokesman Sunday said that it is almost certain that the fire Saturday morning in a mosque in Enkhuizen was lit. How the arson was carried out, the police did not disclose. It is not yet clear in which way the perpetrators must be sought.

The fire started around 05:30 in the former school building at Tureluurshof. The fire was quickly spotted and extinguished.

According to police spokesman, the prayer house incurred much smoke and soot damage.
In 2011 the mosque was also the target of arson. Then burning material was thrown over the fence.

The mosque at the Tureluurshof of the Islamic Foundation Netherlands.

The mosque administration had plans last year to move to a larger vacant school in Enkhuizen to Reigerweg. This building, however, was in July last year destroyed by a fire that presumably was lit.

The arson attack created quite a bit of enthusiasm and cheer in right-wing Dutch Nationalist quarters.

Another disturbing attack in Wisconsin against Sikhs by self-proclaimed “freedom fighters.”

Green Bay man accused of setting fire to store owned by Sikh

by Ashley Luthern (Journal Sentinel)

A 53-year-old man is charged with a hate crime, accused of setting fire to a Green Bay convenience store owned by a Sikh American – seven months after the most deadly U.S. attack on Sikhs in recent memory at an Oak Creek temple.

James Parrish of Green Bay faces charges of arson with a hate crime modification, first-degree recklessly endangering safety and carrying a concealed weapon. Police arrested Parrish shortly after 7 p.m. March 5 at Dollar Land Inc., 1020 N. Irwin Ave., formerly called Beach Road Liquor. He reportedly entered the store, dumped a liquid on the register and set it on fire, according to Green Bay police.

The Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund issued a statement Thursday praising the Brown County district attorney’s office and Green Bay police for treating the arson as a hate crime.

“On the seven-month anniversary of the mass shooting at the Gurdwara (Sikh house of worship) in Oak Creek, hate once again raised its head in Wisconsin,” Jasjit Singh, the fund’s executive director, said in a news release.

“We must come together in a spirit of tolerance and community to prevent further acts of hate in Wisconsin and across the nation,” he said.

A criminal complaint says that a store employee said Parrish, smelling of alcohol, came in regularly and on the day of the fire, asked her for a date. After she declined, Parrish then walked around the store looking for balloons before returning to the register and dumping the liquid, which the employee said smelled like gasoline.

Earlier in the day, police had been called to Parrish’s house twice for welfare checks. The first time, a social worker requested the check after Parrish said “he works for the CIA and needs to round up terrorists and torture them.”

The second call was made because Parrish was heard commenting throughout the week that “he is a freedom fighter now and that his mission is to go deal with his issues with Beach Road Liquor and to make their money burn.”

When Parrish was arrested, he told officers that “he cooked the register at Beach Road Liquor to get them the hell out of Wisconsin and commented on how they would not be able to open their business until approximately noon tomorrow, giving them time to get the hell out,” the complaint states. Parrish’s next court date is April 5.

On Aug. 5, seven months before Parrish’s alleged arson attack, a white supremacist opened fire at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin, killing six and wounding four before he was wounded by a police officer and then killed himself.

More than 20 million people worldwide follow the Sikh religion, established about 500 years ago in the Punjab region of India, and about 3,000 Sikh families live in southeastern Wisconsin. Sikhs have often been mistaken for Muslims and targeted in hate crimes.

Attacks on mosques and Muslims in Australia isn’t anything new, it has been a regular feature of the loon landscape.

(News.com.au)

Whyalla’s Muslim community has been praying outside in stifling temperatures above 40C after fires damaged their mosque.

The fires, which started about 4am on Thursday, are being treated as suspicious. A spokesman for the community, Hasan Aziz, said he believes the attack was a “hate crime”.

“The way it’s been carried out tells us that it’s a targeted crime, a hate crime,” he said. “In a town like Whyalla, of all the places, it’s very unlikely for such an act to be carried out. There’s been no problems in the past.”

The blaze caused smoke damage inside the Morris Crescent mosque after fires were lit at the front and back door of the property. “The front and the back doors have been burnt totally,” Mr Aziz said. “They put petrol on both of them and they lit it on fire.”

Mr Aziz said that the community, which meets twice a day at the mosque, has been forced to pray outside in searing temperatures. “It’s pretty bad. We can’t carry out any of the prayers, so we’ve had to do it outside,” he said.

The building was insured. A police spokesman said the fire caused minimal damage but appeared to be suspicious. Local Crime Investigation Branch detectives are investigating.

Mosque arson suspect indicted on hate crime charges

(WNWO)

TOLEDO — The Indiana man accused of setting fire to a prayer room at the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo has been charged with hate crimes in a federal indictment.

Officials announced Thursday Randolph Linn, 52, of St. Joe, Indiana was charged with intentionally defacing, damaging and destroying religious property and using fire to commit a felony.

The indictment alleges on Sept. 30, Linn drove from Indiana to the Islamic Center in Perrysburg and used gasoline to set fire to the prayer room after unlawfully entering.

The Perrysburg Township Fire Department was notified around 5 p.m. Officers discovered the carpet burned near a red plastic gas can in the middle of the prayer room.

The fire was extinguished by sprinklers, causing significant damage to the room and other areas of the center. The fire was ruled an arson, according to an affidavit filed in U.S. District Court.

After releasing a surveillance photo of the suspect, a woman contacted authorities to identify Linn as the culprit. The woman stated that she knew Linn and that he had recently made anti-Muslim comments. Specifically, she stated that Linn had complained about the international Muslim community’s reaction to the anti-Muslim video on Youtube and recent attacks on U.S. embassies and the deaths of military personnel in the Middle East. She further stated that Linn complained that Muslims in this country get a “free pass,” according to the affidavit.

Linn was arrested on Oct. 2. While being booked and after being read his Miranda rights, Linn stated: “(expletive) those Muslims,” according to the affidavit. He is scheduled to be arraigned Thursday in U.S. District Court in Toledo.

Smoke, water damage reaches into every room of Islamic Center

The Islamic Center of Greater Toledo looks grand when viewing it from I-75. You can’t tell from the outside that a fire wreaked devastation inside the mosque.

The sprinklers worked. The structure was saved. Insurance will cover repairs. But the fire, heat, smoke, and water from the incident on Sunday caused major damage to the house of worship and school.

In the prayer room, where shoes were once removed in reverence, work boots now tread. The center of the carpet is burned. The interior of the dome above it must be replaced. The bookcases next to where the imam would stand, which contained Qur’ans and books and which worshipers would see when facing Mecca, are now empty.

“You can see the smoke on the wall and then, around the dome. It’s not supposed to be that color — how gray it is,” said Dr. Mahjabeen Islam, president of the Islamic Center.

Cleaning equipment does its work in the kitchen area of the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo, which sustained damage in every room, said center President Mahjabeen Islam. Bill Lark of SMB Construction, which is working on the cleanup, said he “couldn’t ask for a better place to be right now. Everybody’s been wonderful.” But the wonder of the mosque’s leaders is tempered by the attack on their building. Dr. Islam said, “However much you expect [bad news], it’s no, this couldn’t have happened, how could this happen? It’s just in one fell swoop taken everything,” she said. “For people who’ve seen it before, they can understand that it’s absolutely every single room [damaged]. That is what really bothers me, and I say it ad nauseum, that if it was a burglary or a shooting you just get one section, and you can fix it up. They say now six months, it’s going to take six months” to restore the mosque’s interior.

And in the meantime, the Islamic School of Greater Toledo, which has 25 students in prekindergarten through fifth grade, must meet in Maumee, at the Arrowhead Park Learning Center of Owens Community College.

Jenise Protsman, who teaches reading, language arts, and social studies to first through fourth-grade students — and whose religion is Christian-based — said the fire is “very gut-wrenching.”

She said it was “very shocking to walk in” to the classrooms Wednesday when the teachers went to salvage what they could.

On Thursday, tearful teachers were still salvaging what remained, learning that many items, including materials and posters made by hand and memorabilia for the children, could not be used after the fire.

Manal El-Sheikh, a Muslim kindergarten teacher who has taught at the school since it opened and was being helped by a girl whom she taught three years earlier, was cleaning book covers while wearing blue rubber gloves.

These classrooms on the first floor were flooded from the sprinkler putting the fire out on the second floor.

She said that she was sad that so much material — some that she made and items she brought from Egypt, such as Arabic alphabet instruction items — cannot be taken to the temporary school.

She said, “We all come from the same family, Adam and Eve, whether you like it or not.”

In other words, the attacker is not so far from the victim.

Randy Linn, 52, of St. Joe, Ind., was charged Wednesday in Perrysburg Municipal Court with two counts of aggravated arson, two counts of aggravated burglary, and carrying a concealed weapon.

Federal and Ohio authorities named him as “the person of interest” captured by a surveillance camera outside the Islamic Center during the fire on Sunday.

He was being held in the Wood County jail Thursday night in lieu of a $400,000 bond. His next court appearance is scheduled for Oct. 11.

“If anything is a hate crime, this is it,” Dr. Islam said.

Rather than dwelling on the hate, though, Dr. Islam speaks about an Arabic word, Masliha.

This means, she said, “there is a divine will or divine reasonings why some things happen, so maybe there’s a divine will [to this incident].

“Maybe it’s to tell the nation and the world that this is an issue that Muslims are under attack, and we need to stop bigotry and intolerance. Maybe it just makes Muslims come together and resolve their differences around this issue. One never knows.”

Toledo-area Muslims will be together today for prayers at 1:30 p.m. under a tent on the grounds of the Islamic Center. Friday happens to be the 32nd anniversary of the dedication of the mosque.

The larger community will stand with Muslims at 2 p.m. Sunday for an interfaith service at the Islamic Center.

While Dr. Islam welcomes the support of the Muslim and non-Muslim communities, her gratitude is shadowed by memories of the damage.

“The first time that I did the walk through [after the fire] it was dark because the power was out. I could see that there was water all over the place, there was soot in the water and, like, black puddles, and there was obviously a very large burnt area in the prayer area.

“But the greater impact,” she said on Thursday while showing the damage to reporters, “because of the passage of a couple of days is now — because now that the power is there, I see that every single room is damaged, and some are damaged more than others. But every single room of the Islamic Center is out of commission, and it’s now sinking in, both the extent of the damage physically and the impact emotionally sinking in, and it is very difficult to deal with. I’m sorry, it is very emotional.

“These wounds can only be healed by the balm of love and compassion. You can’t burn our spirit,” she said.

Suspect in Toledo Center Fire

The Islamic Center of Greater Toledo was targeted by arsonists according to investigators. Not much else has been revealed about the attack, but one must question whether this arson attack is part of the larger pattern of hate crimes that we have witnessed over the past several years targeting Muslim places of worship.:

Investigators say fire at Ohio mosque was arson

Investigators say a fire inside a landmark mosque in Ohio was intentionally set.

Little information was being released Monday about the fire at the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo.

The blaze broke out Sunday and caused both smoke and water damage on the second floor of the mosque that sits along Interstate 75 near Toledo.

The building’s gold dome is visible for miles and is a landmark in northwest Ohio.

Associated Press, 1 October 2012

See also “Local mosque fire ruled arson”, Toledo Blade, 2 October 2012

People for the American Way has an info-graphic that gives a visual representation of attacks on mosques in the USA, highlighting that the phenomenon of hate attacks is spread across the country:

UPDATE I: Arrest Made Near Ft. Wayne, Ind., in Islamic Center Arson

Toledo Blade

Authorities confirmed today that an arrest has been made in the fire at the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo on Sunday.

The arrest was made late today near Fort Wayne, Ind., and is reported by authorities to be the person of interest that was captured by a surveillance camera outside the center, 25877 Scheider Rd.

“We believe the person in the photos is the person we have in custody,” said Shane Cartmill, spokesman for the State Fire Marshal’s Office.

Additional details on the arrest were not immediately available.

Crews responded to the fire shortly after 5 p.m. Sunday. It was ruled an arson case on Monday. Police Sgt. James Gross said earlier today that investigators have finished their investigation inside the center and turned over results to center administrators on Monday.

He also said investigators do not yet know if the motive for the fire was religion based.

“Even if we did know we wouldn’t be releasing that,” Sergeant Gross said. “There’s no indication of that right now…”

Several people did a walk-through of the center on Monday and were inside again on Tuesday to do an evaluation of damage, Sergeant Gross said.

Officials have said most of the damage — primarily smoke and water — was on the second floor in the prayer room. A damage estimate has not been released.

The center remained closed on Tuesday and there was no indication when it might reopen.

UPDATE II: Suspect Named and Arrested

(NorthwestOhio.com)

According to a source with the Ohio State Fire Marshal’s office, an arrest has been made in connection to Sunday’s arson at the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo.

A detective with Perrysburg Township Police would only say the investigation is ”continuing” and would not name the suspect.

However, the Toledo Blade was able to obtain the name from Indiana authorities.

The paper says the accused arsonist is 52-year-old Randy T. Linn of St. Joe, Indiana.

Linn has now been charged with two counts of arson, and one count each of aggravated burglary as well as carrying a concealed weapon.

The suspect was picked up Tuesday afternoon near Fort Wayne, Indiana.

On Monday night, Police released three surveillance photos of a “person of interest” in the case.

Shane Cartmill, state fire marshal spokesman, told the Toledo Blade that Linn is the person in those images.

UPDATE III: Ind. man charged with hate crime in OH mosque fire

PERRYSBURG, Ohio (AP) — Federal prosecutors say they’ve filed hate-crimes charges against an Indiana man suspected of starting a fire that damaged a landmark mosque in northwest Ohio.

They said Friday that charges filed in U.S. District Court in Toledo allege Randolph Linn of St. Joe intentionally damaged property because of its religious character and used fire and explosives to commit a felony.

Authorities say they found a plastic gas can in the middle of the prayer room damaged by the Sunday blaze at the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo.

They say a woman who identified the 52-year-old Linn on surveillance video told authorities he’d recently made anti-Muslim comments referencing an anti-Islam video and recent attacks on U.S. embassies.

[Note: The original image we were provided of the mosque of  Condé-sur-Escaut was incorrect.]

Arson Attempt Against Errahma Mosque

tr. from French to English (Al-Kanz)

New attack against a place of worship. According to the CFCM, the mosque of Condé-sur-Escaut, in the North, was incurred in the night from Thursday to Friday, September 14, an attempted arson.

It is, as often in acts of vandalism committed at night, when the faithful went to the Subh prayer, prayer before dawn, two outbreaks of fire, and burned two strands, were discovered. The damage could be serious. Only two windows handles, reports the CFCM, burned.

A complaint was filed against X by the association that runs the mosque Errahma.

In a statement posted on its website, the CFCM “reiterates its request for establishment of a parliamentary information mission” that would lead “concrete proposals to ensure the safety and protection of places of worship.”

In ten days, six Muslim places of worship have been attacked. On the night of 5 to 6 September, a neo-Nazi inscriptions swastika on one of the walls of the mosque of Agen . Three days later, two places of worship were desecrated Epone in Yvelines . The last weekend for the third time in two months, the mosque Barp, south of Bordeaux, was desecrated. Thursday, September 12th, we learned that the door of the mosque of Limoges was covered with excrement .

Early August, still in the south, there were two heads of pigs at the mosque Montauban .

Original story in French, via. Al-Kanz:

Nouvelle attaque contre un lieu de culte. Selon le CFCM, la mosquée de Condé-sur-l’Escaut, dans le Nord, a été subie, dans la nuit de jeudi à vendredi 14 septembre, une tentative d’incendie.

C’est, comme souvent lors d’actes de vandalismes commis la nuit, au moment où les fidèles se sont rendus à la prière du subh, prière d’avant l’aube, que deux départs de feu, ainsi que deux mèches consumées, ont été découverts. Les dégâts auraient pu être sérieux. Seules les poignées de deux fenêtres, rapporte le CFCM, ont brûlé.

Une plainte contre X a été déposée par l’association Errahma qui gère la mosquée.

Dans un communiqué publié sur son site Internet, le CFCM « réitère sa demande de mise en place d’une mission d’information parlementaire » qui déboucherait « sur des propositions concrètes pour assurer la sécurité et la protection des lieux de culte ».

En dix jours, six lieux de culte musulmans ont fait l’objet d’attaques. Dans la nuit du 5 au 6 septembre, une des inscriptions néo-nazies croix gammée sur l’un des murs de la mosquée d’Agen. Trois jours plus tard, deux lieux de cultes ont été profanés à Epône, dans les Yvelines. Le week-end dernier, pour la troisième fois en deux mois, la mosquée de Barp, au sud de Bordeaux, a été profanée. Jeudi 12 septembre, on apprenait que la porte de la mosquée de Limoges a été recouverte d’excréments.

Début août, toujours dans le sud, on retrouvait deux têtes de cochons devant la mosquée de Montauban.

by Glenn Greenwald (Salon.com)

(updated below – Update II [Fri.])

Shortly after the Islamic Society of Joplin opened a mosque in 2007 in Joplin, a small town in Southwest Missouri, the sign in front was set on fire, an act determined to be arson. On the 4th of July of this year, someone who is undoubtedly a deeply patriotic person was filmed by a surveillance camera throwing a flaming object onto the roof of the mosque in an attempt to burn it down, causing some fire damage (see the video below); despite a $15,000 reward offered by the FBI for information leading to the arrest of those responsible and a clear shot of the attacker’s face, nobody has come forward to identify him.

On Monday of this week — the day after the Sikh temple shooting in Wisconsin — that same Joplin mosque burned to the ground, completely destroyed by a fire that began in the middle of the night. So powerful was the fire that “only remnants indicated a building had been there, including some stone pillars that were still standing and a few pieces of charred plywood loosely held up by a frame.” Although the cause has not yet been determined, investigators — for obvious reasons — have labeled the fire “suspicious” and are searching for signs of arson. As obviously ugly as these incidents are, they offer an opportunity to make an important statement.

In response to these events, a teenaged member of that mosque, Joplin high school student Laela Zaidi, began using social media such as Reddit to talk about what happened and to discuss the importance of the mosque to her community (it’s not only the town’s only mosque, but the only one within a 50-mile radius, leaving Joplin’s Muslim families with no place to gather for Ramadan); the results of Zaidi’s online efforts (including her defense of her community) are surprisingly moving. In Salon on Monday, Joplin native Susan Campbell described the abundant humanitarianism in the town when it was devastated by a horrendous tornado last year, and called upon residents to tap into those same sentiments now by turning the July 4 attacker into authorities. Local-area churches and synagogues have quickly united in a show of support for the mosque.

The decent people in and around Joplin have manifest their disgust at the targeting of houses of worship and display love for their neighbors. (h/t: gu)

Christian college student’s idea leads to rally for burned mosque

By Josh Levs, CNN

(CNN) - When 20-year-old Ashley Carter heard about a mosque burned to the ground in her town this week, she was shocked.

“I was very saddened,” she told CNN on Wednesday. “I thought it was very evil.”

So Carter, a student at Ozark Christian College in Joplin, Missouri, texted a friend, suggesting they organize an event “promoting acts of love.”

But quickly, the idea changed: They would organize a “rally of people coming together, from all walks of life, all religions, a really diverse group of people trying to promote this radical love.”

She called Kimberly Kester, spokeswoman for the Islamic Society of Joplin, whose worship house serving about 50 families in the southwest Missouri city burned down Monday. Investigators have not determined the cause, but the mosque has been attacked in the past.

My Faith: After my mosque was torched

Kester supported the idea. So Carter and some of her friends created the plan for the rally and announced it on a Facebook page. The next day, Tuesday, word began to spread. By Wednesday morning, more than 400 people had posted that they would attend the event, scheduled for Saturday, August 25.

Carter said she was inspired by “my love for Jesus. And I know that Jesus calls us to love people.”

“With everything that’s been happening in the news this week” – which includes a shooting Sunday at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin that left six worshipers and the gunman dead – “I was pretty discouraged,” Carter said. “Regardless of what you believe, I think everybody’s entitled to loving whoever.”

Kester told CNN she and other members of the mosque plan to attend the rally.

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The response to the burning from people throughout the community has been “outstanding,” she said. “There were representatives from different churches, different organizations at the site that afternoon speaking to the Imam. People have been calling anyone that they know that has been involved with the mosque, offering to help.”

St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in Joplin is hosting an iftar – a meal eaten by Muslims after dark during Ramadan – on Wednesday evening. The Council on American-Islamic Relations announced that speakers will include members of the interfaith community. Sponsoring groups include the South Joplin Christian Church, the United Hebrew Congregation, the First Community Church and Peace Lutheran Church, CAIR said.

Representatives of various Islamic groups will attend, Kester said. They will discuss the future and what provisions are needed to continue Sunday school and prayers.

The mosque is holding daily prayers at someone’s house now, and expects to rent a new place as soon as this week, although numerous religious institutions have offered their facilities, Kester said.

CNN’s Belief Blog: The faith angles behind the biggest stories

“We’re hoping for security and that type of support from our community,” she added.

Members say this is an opportunity to kind of start over and improve on things that we’ve always wanted to improve upon, like our security system or Sunday school facilities,” she said. “It’s a time for us to unite and focus on supporting each other. And yes, it’s a tragedy … but we want to focus on coming together and building a stronger community.”

No final decision has been made on whether the mosque will move to a new location, but there is a consensus to move inside the city limits, Kester said. “We feel that the response time for fire employees would be less if were in the city limits and it would offer us a little bit more protection and security.”

No definite plans will be made before an investigation is completed into the burning, said the mosque’s treasurer, Navid Zaidi. “We need to get this crime solved, before we do anything.”

He said he hopes the rally is safe and that authorities keep everyone protected. Assuming the fire was arson, the perpetrator “is out there – he is loose,” Zaidi said.

Zaidi described the support coming from the community as “tremendous.”

A fundraising effort to help rebuild the mosque is off to an auspicious start.

The website of the official campaign shows a goal of $250,000, with more than $40,000 pledged by Wednesday afternoon.

A video for the campaign refers to the mosque as “our refuge in a crazy and hectic world.” It shows what the mosque looked like, followed by images of the charred wreckage.

Arsalan Iftikhar, an international human rights lawyer and founder of TheMuslimGuy.com, tweeted that he will donate a dollar for every retweet of his message. He quickly got hundreds of retweets.

Iftikhar is a frequent contributor to CNN.com.

Carter says she expects donations to be taken at the rally. And anyone who wants to donate money to cover the costs of staging the rally can through the Facebook page.

Different kinds of bands will play, including religious bands, she said. And speakers will talk about “promoting love.”

“When there’s an act of hate, you have a choice to make it something beautiful. So that’s what this is all about: making things beautiful from things that aren’t.”

UPDATE I:

Joplin Mosque Raises Half its Rebuilding Goal in 2 Days

“The mosque has raised $126,000 of its $250,000 goal in an online campaign that’s attracted nearly 1,000 donors, many of them anonymous. A suspicious fire early Monday morning razed the mosque. This last blaze followed an arson attempt caught on tape five weeks ago that the FBI is still investigating.”

UPDATE II:

Joplin mosque members encouraged by support

“Members of a Joplin mosque that was destroyed in a fire will rebuild and have been encouraged by the support shown them by the Joplin community.”

Imam Lahmuddin holds his hands over his face after a fire destroyed the Islamic Society of Joplin, Mo., mosque, Monday, Aug. 6, 2012, in Joplin, Mo. The fire was the second fire to hit the Islamic center in little more than a month. (AP Photo/The Joplin Globe, T. Rob Brown)

The Islamic Mosque of Joplin has possibly been targeted by arsonists for a second time. There is a Fire investigation going on as we speak. Police previously released video image of the suspect from the first fire (h/t: JSB).

Update: Award is Now Being Offered in Joplin Islamic Mosque Fire

By: Katie Love Updated: August 6, 2012

Update: The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of whoever may have caused today’s fire.  The Washington-based Muslim civil rights organization is in touch with the FBI about the case.

The CAIR called for stepped-up police protection at Muslim institutions and other houses of worship nationwide after hearing about the Joplin fire and after yesterday’s deadly shooting at a Sikh temple in Washington.

(JOPLIN, MO)– The Islamic Mosque in Joplin is on fire for the second time this summer.

Firefighters were called to the mosque on Black Cat Rd. around 3:30 Monday morning.

When crews arrived, the west side of the building was on fire, but it quickly spread.

The entire mosque has burned to the ground..

The Jasper County Sheriff’s Office confirmed the fire marshal has already been called in to investigate.

Mosque leaders say they are stunned by the fire, but are planning to continue their religious observances.

Investigators are holding a press conference later today regarding the fire.

Another fire, which was deemed arson, was reported at the same building July 4th.

Authorities released surveillance video of the suspect, but no arrests have been made.

We will update you as more details become available