SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
randy fine
The San Diego Mosque Hate Crime and the Political Leaders Who Lit the Fuse
When powerful men and women with microphones and platforms tell the public that Muslim Americans are enemies, invaders, and less than human, some people listen. Some people act. Two teenagers in San Diego just did.
May 20, 2026
A hate crime had struck close to home. On the TV screen, more than four dozen police cars, blue lights swirling in a cold, mechanical rhythm. The news ticker crawled across the bottom of the TV screen, sanitizing horror into a newsbreak: police responding to an "incident" in San Diego's Clairemont Mesa neighborhood. An incident. I didn't think much of it at first. Then my phone rang. A friend. I couldn't bring myself to answer. Moments later, a text came through, cryptic, short and to the point: "Check on the Imam, shooting at the Islamic Center."
The world stopped.
I scrolled through my contacts, found the number, and dialed. My heart hammered against my chest with every ring. Then his voice. I closed my eyes. "We are okay. The school children are safe. We evacuated the mosque," Imam Taha said.
I let out a breath I did not know I had been holding. But okay, I would learn in the minutes and hours that followed, that was not the whole story. Three men who had been okay that morning would never be okay again.
The politicians who run their election campaigns casting American Muslims as enemies owe this community more than thoughts and prayers.
Under the steady and visionary leadership of Imam Taha Hassane, the Islamic Center of San Diego has grown into far more than a place of worship. It is a living, breathing hub of culture and education, a place where faith leaders of every denomination and neighbors of every background have always found an open door and a welcoming table. It is, in the truest sense of the word, a community, one that has spent decades building bridges in a city that repaid the generosity with bullets.
In less than 10 minutes, hate stole the life of three human beings. Amin Abdullah, who welcomed you with a curious smile when you came in, a father and a husband. Mansour Kaziha, a husband, father, and grandfather who greeted his community every day from behind the mosque store counter. And Nader Awad, who, as bullets tore through the air around him, ran into the fire to save others. Three men. Three families shattered. A community in mourning.
This hate crime did not occur in isolation. It comes amid an unprecedented and metastasizing culture of Islamophobia in the United States, where politicians have discovered that Muslim hate is a reliable path to election and commentators have built empires of followers on the broken backs of a vilified community. The names attached to this campaign are not fringe figures shouting into the void from dark corners of the internet. They are sitting senators. Elected congressmen. A president of the United States and his closest advisers. They speak from podiums, not podcasts, and have press secretaries, not anonymous accounts. And they have never—not once—been made to answer for what their words have unleashed.
As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump claimed that “Islam hates us." His close associate Laura Loomer wasted no time making the blood of victims useful to her agenda. Hours after the shooting, questioned the shooting calling it “The mosque that was 'supposedly' shot up today… people who attend this mosque want us all to be killed." Three men were murdered, and she called the victims a threat.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) says of Islam, “The enemy is inside the gates.” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) wants Big Brother to monitor Muslim neighborhoods. Congressman Randy Fine (R-Fla.) is the most explicit in spewing hate, declaring, “We need more Islamophobia, not less.”
Imagine the cry if another congressman said we need more Jewish hate.
A Washington Post investigation found that since the beginning of 2025, more than 100 members of Congress have mentioned Muslims or Islam in social media posts, with two-thirds of those posts referencing radical Islam, Sharia law, extremism, or terrorism. According to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, these statements have amplified Islamophobia and created an environment that fosters discrimination against Muslims. Hate and Islamophobia appear to be a winning election strategy for Republican candidates in November.
When powerful men and women with microphones and platforms tell the public that Muslim Americans are enemies, invaders, and less than human, some people listen. Some people act. Two teenagers in San Diego just did.
I will say something that many might find abhorrent, but that I believe with every fiber of my being: The murderers Cain Clark and Caleb Vazquez were also victims. Not of the same order as Amin, Mansour, and Nader, for nothing diminishes what was taken from those three men, their families, and community. But victims, nonetheless. Victims of a political and media ecosystem that fed them a steady dose of dehumanization, paranoia, and hatred of Muslims. They were radicalized by adults who knew exactly what they were doing but faced no accountability for it. Trump, Loomer, Tuberville, Fine, and many others did not pull the trigger, but they loaded the gun with the bullets of hate and pointed it at a place of worship. The blood of five people—including those two teenagers—is on their hands.
The failure is not at the federal level only. In the City of San Diego, Mayor Tod Gloria's performance of solidarity rings hollow against his record of deliberate exclusion. His administration refused to call for even a symbolic ceasefire as genocide unfolded in Gaza. He declined to meet with Muslim and Arab community leaders, fearing the political cost for acknowledging Palestinian life. Most recently, his City Council moved to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, a Zionist tool to silence voices critical of Israel’s malevolent policies. Every one of these decisions sent a message to San Diego's Muslim community: We don’t value you unless you’re dead, and your lives are worth less than the political comfort of those in power. That message was heard far beyond City Hall.
That dismissal, that deliberate erasure was incubated, fertilized, watered, and brought to lethal bloom by years of sanctioned dehumanization of Muslim Americans and sent a signal to every hateful actor watching: This community is fair game.
San Diego Mayor Gloria, who dismissed our cries in life, has no standing to console us in death. The politicians who run their election campaigns casting American Muslims as enemies owe this community more than thoughts and prayers.
The blood in San Diego does not belong only to two lost teenagers. It belongs to everyone who fed them, directly or indirectly, the ideology of Muslim hate.
Keep ReadingShow Less
FBI Disrupts Plot to Assassinate Head of Pro-Palestinian Rights Group in New York
"This disturbing case underscores the growing climate of harassment, threats, and violence directed at those speaking out on Palestinian human rights and other social justice issues."
Mar 27, 2026
Nerdeen Kiswani, the co-founder of the Palestinian rights group Within Our Lifetime, emphasized on Friday that public threats and violent rhetoric from a sitting Republican congressman and a Zionist organization had preceded the news that there was an active plot to assassinate her.
The FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force notified Kiswani and her legal team on Thursday night that "a plot against my life... was 'about to' take place, and that agents had conducted an operation in Hoboken [New Jersey] related to this plot."
The US attorney's office in New Jersey said Alexander Heifler, 26, had been charged with one count of unlawful possession of destructive devices and one count of making destructive devices, and was accused of plotting to attack Kiswani's residence with molotov cocktails. Another man had been charged in connection with the plot as well.
An undercover officer infiltrated a group call in which Heifler allegedly asked for assistance with "molotovs." The suspect also told the undercover officer he had an address for the "victim," the formal complaint reads. The officer was at Heifler's home on Thursday when he assembled about eight molotov cocktails on Thursday.
In a joint statement, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and its New York chapter urged "a full and transparent investigation, appropriate prosecution of those responsible, and continued vigilance by law enforcement to protect all communities from hate-driven violence."
Kiswani's organization has held protests in New York that have drawn hundreds of supporters, particularly since Israel began its US-backed war on Gaza in 2023 and public opposition to the Israeli government and the United States' support for it decreased substantially.
Like other Palestinian rights groups, supporters of Israel's government have accused Within Our Lifetime of antisemitism, but Kiswani and other organizers have vehemently denied those accustions.
Group members and supporters frequently chant: “Judaism, yes, Zionism no! The state of Israel has got to go!” at protests.
On Friday, Kiswani noted that the pro-Israel group Betar and US Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.), who has long been known for making openly Islamophobic statements, including against Muslim members of Congress, "encouraged violence against" the organizer and her family.
Last month, Kiswani filed a civil rights lawsuit against Betar, alleging it had subjected her to physical intimidation and racially motivated threats that went "far beyond protected speech."
"It has used its social media accounts to publicly offer cash rewards to anyone who would hand Ms Kiswani a beeper, a direct reference to Israel’s 2024 use of exploding pagers to kill Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon. On multiple occasions, Betar affiliates physically confronted Ms Kiswani on public sidewalks and at demonstrations, cornering her, and shouting threats," Kiswani's attorneys said.
Kiswani said the group's threats amounted to them putting "bounties" on her head.
In response to the news of the assassination plot, Betar on Friday called Kiswani a "violent terrorist."
"Not surprising if other terrorists targeted her," said the group on social media. "Palestinians have always targeted one another. Not surprising given the violent nature of these people who have globalized the intifada."
In January, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced an agreement in which Betar said it would dissolve its New York operations and stop its “widespread persecution of Muslim, Arab, Palestinian, and Jewish New Yorkers” who disagree with its stance on Israel and Palestine.
The Times reported that there was no indication that Betar was connected to the plot on Kiswani's life.
Kiswani has also been targeted by Fine, a notorious anti-Muslim bigot who responded to a satirical post by the organizer last month about dogs being "unclean" by saying, "If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.”
CAIR and CAIR-NY said that "no one in our nation should face violence or intimidation because of their identity, advocacy, or political views."
"We welcome law enforcement’s disruption of the alleged plot to firebomb the home of Palestinian-American activist Nerdeen Kiswani," said the groups. "This disturbing case underscores the growing climate of harassment, threats, and violence directed at those speaking out on Palestinian human rights and other social justice issues. Such actions not only endanger individuals but also threaten the fundamental freedoms of speech and civic engagement."
Keep ReadingShow Less
See More
Most Popular
To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.
News & Opinion
Trending
Common Dreams, Inc. Founded 1997. Registered 501(c3) Non-Profit
Privacy Policy