News
May 22, 2026
Imam Blames Anti-Muslim Rhetoric for San Diego Attack: 'This Is What We Get'
By Michelle Boorstein, N. Kirkpatrick
San Diego, CA: Religious leaders from across the country are warning that a deadly shooting at a San Diego Islamic center — the latest in a string of attacks against houses of worship — reflects the escalating rhetoric against Muslims and other religious groups.
“This tragedy is a painful reminder that Islamophobia and religious bigotry continue to endanger lives and undermine the safety and rights of minority communities,” said a statement from the Indian American Muslim Council. “We urge political leaders, law enforcement, and civil society to confront anti-Muslim hatred with the seriousness it demands and to ensure that all communities are able to worship in peace and security.”
Monday’s fatal shooting of three men at the Islamic Center of San Diego also brought a spotlight to the issue of public funding for security at religious institution. Hundreds of clergy were on Capitol Hill Tuesday as a bill was filed in the Senate to provide $1 billion in additional funding for such security.
San Diego police said the two teenage suspects in Monday’s attack were radicalized online. In one of their vehicles, the FBI found “writings and various ideologies outlining religious and racial beliefs of how the world they envisioned should look.” The two were found dead nearby shortly after the attack.
“When elected officials, when the media try to dehumanize a community, this is the result," Imam Taha Hassane, the center’s director, said in an interview with The Washington Post. “When we don’t watch what we say about one another as Americans, this is what we get.”
Multiple Republican members of Congress along with prominent social influencers this year have made Islamophobic public statements .
“Muslims don’t belong in American society. Pluralism is a lie,” Rep Andrew Ogles (Tennessee) posted on X in March.
In February, Rep Randy Fine (Florida) posted on the same platform: “If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.”
Sen Tommy Tuberville (Alabama) said on the Senate floor in January that “radical Muslims” are coming to the United States with the intent to “destroy the West.”
“The enemy is now inside the gates,” he said.
His spokesperson, Malloy Bount Jaspers, said Tuesday that Tuberville “stands by his comments.” The offices of Fine and Ogles did not respond to requests for comment.
Muslim leaders said Tuesday that the attack in San Diego “did not occur in a vacuum. It is a direct result of a polarizing political climate in which elected leaders (including members of Congress as recently as last week) have normalized the hatred of Muslims in rhetoric and policies.
“Hateful speech from the halls of Congress does not stay in Washington DC. It travels. Yesterday, it arrived at a school full of children,” the group of local and national leaders said in a statement.
The day before the San Diego attack, thousands attended a White House-led religious festival on the National Mall in which dozens of speakers repeated that, in their view, the United States was founded as a Christian nation and must remain so.
Religious scholars said the event was unprecedented in modern US history and did not reflect the goal of America’s founders: to bar the government from being tied to one faith.
Some who attended said they believe the country is in a kind of spiritual battle against Islam.
At a White House briefing Tuesday, Vice President JD Vance called the San Diego attack “reprehensible.” He then tied his reaction to the theme echoed at the Sunday festival: what he called America’s Christian character.
The attack was especially egregious, he said, because “one of the fundamental American rights that I think came from our Christian heritage as a civilization is the idea that we respect people’s religious freedom, in part because we respect them as human beings, but also because we respect their right to find their own pathway to God.”
Committing violence in the name of religion, Vance said, “is a fundamental violation of the laws of God.”
Bishop Michael Pham , of San Diego, said the Islamic Center in San Diego has been a “longtime partner in our collaborative work for justice, especially in accompanying immigrants.”
“An attack on one faith community is an attack on the sacred dignity of all human life,” Pham’s statement said.
Several other houses of worship and schools from different faith communities have also faced violent attacks over the last year.
In March, an armed man rammed a truck into a Detroit-area synagogue before exchanging gunfire with security guards and starting a fire that caused significant damage. The FBI said he was motivated in his attack on Temple Israel by “Hezbollah’s militant ideology.”
Last fall, four people were killed and nine more wounded when a man in Michigan drove a truck into a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints building and set its chapel on fire. The FBI said he had “anti-religious beliefs against the Mormon religious community.”
Last summer two children were killed and several others were injured in a shooting during Mass at the Church of the Annunciation, a Catholic parish and school in Minneapolis. The shooter, who authorities say died of a self-inflicted gunshot, was a former student at the parish’s school.
“The threat facing religious communities in America is real, urgent, and growing,” said a statement by the Jewish Federations of North America. “No one should ever fear for their safety while gathering in prayer, community, or worship.”
Jewish groups were in DC on Tuesday to support a bill filed by Senators James Lankford (R-Oklahoma) and Jacky Rosen (D-Nevada). It would provide $1 billion in security funding for religious institutions, on top of the $750 million a bipartisan group of lawmakers requested from Congress last month.
Hassane said his mosque had been approved for DHS security funding multiple times. Many in the 100,000-member Muslim community in San Diego are immigrants and refugees coming from around the world, Hassane said, adding that many had fled violence and civil war.
San Diego, he said, is “like the rest of the nation” in terms of experiencing spikes in recent years in Islamophobia and hatred.
“We had several times attempts to vandalize the building. We have received hate mail, hate phone calls, messages — but the tragedy today was unbelievable,” he said. “No one whatsoever thought about something at this scale. … To me, it’s like a dream. I can’t believe that happened at the Islamic Center.”
(Kirkpatrick reported from Los Angeles. Maegan Vazquez contributed to this report. The Washington Post)
Courtesy The Washington Post)
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