Community leaders, elected officials, representatives from various faith communities, advocacy groups and activists gathered at the Cincinnati Islamic Center in Westwood Friday to condemn a break-in there earlier this week that left broken windows, holes in walls and hateful phrases scrawled on a whiteboard.
Islamic Center board member Nashid Shakir said it's the third time the center has suffered a break in in the last seven years.
Someone scrawled racial slurs in the building during the incident previous to the one this week, he said, though it wasn't clear if the vandalism that time was more generally racially motivated or explicitly anti-Muslim.
A whiteboard still had expletives and the word "die" on it, which Shakir said were from Monday's vandalism. The person or people who broke in also shattered a glass display case and two windows and left several large holes in a wall. They also stole a security camera and items from the center's food pantry, he said.
Shakir said he believed the incident was a reminder that the center has more to do to serve its community.
"We pray that you look at this community for its strengths and not its weaknesses," he told reporters. "What happened here was a weakness in the community that needs to be addressed through love, through patience, through dignity and through courage."
Shakir said police have opened an investigation. But he expressed skepticism it would net results, citing slow response to past break-ins and other incidents in the community.
Cincinnati Vice Mayor Jan-Michele Lemon Kearney was also at the center Friday. She called the break in "a sick act" and said the city and Cincinnati Police take the vandalism very seriously. She vowed those responsible would be prosecuted.
"In City Hall we have zero tolerance for hate, zero tolerance for hate crimes," she said. "We're here standing behind this community, the people of the Cincinnati Islamic Center. This should never have happened and we will get to the bottom of it."
Representatives for the Ohio Council on American Islamic Relations said the incident was likely spurred by rising anti-Muslim rhetoric in national politics. CAIR Ohio Executive Director Khalid Turaani said the organization's national arm has documented 17 instances of anti-Muslim bias this year — the most in the organization's three decades in existence.
"This is not just a simple act of vandalism against a Muslim place of worship," he said. "This is not just a Muslim issue or a community issue. It really is an American issue."
Members of Cincinnati's Islamic community plan to speak at the next Cincinnati City Council meeting in September seeking a formal condemnation of the incident from the city. They'll also ask the city to explore funding for an effort to provide trauma and mental health services through the Islamic Center to members of the surrounding community.
Read more: