How to Help Minnesota's Dar Al-Farooq Islamic Center
The FBI has just arrested four white men for the bombing of Minnesota's Dar Al-Farooq Islamic Center. The center serves as both a mosque and a school for the local Somali community.
According to the FBI, the men "traveled eight hours from their small hometown to terrorize Muslims in hopes of making them flee the country."
This disturbing profile of the attackers reads like a encyclopedia of white supremacist terrorism.
They described themselves as a militia based on the "white rabbit" conspiracy theory. One of the attackers bid for a contract to help build Trump's border wall, describing it as "not just a physical barrier to immigration but also as a symbol of the American determination to defend our culture, our language, our heritage, from any outsiders". On another occasion, they impersonated police with a made-up search warrant to rob the home of a Latino victim. The men also bombed a women's health center late last year.
So why did they target a community center so far away from home?
Who knows? But it's worth remembering what Donald Trump said at a Minnesota campaign rally just days before the 2016 election: "Here in Minnesota, you’ve seen firsthand the problems caused with faulty refugee vetting, with large numbers of Somali refugees coming into your state without your knowledge, without your support or approval, and with some of them then joining ISIS and spreading their extremist views all over our country and all over the world. Everybody’s reading about the disaster taking place in Minnesota.”
BTW: Trump never commented on the bombing.
His spokesperson at the time, Sebastian Gorka, urged restraint because, in his words, many "fake hate crimes" had been reported.
How to help defend Muslim communities against attacks
Tweet at @realdonaldtrump to urge him to finally condem the Bloomington attack. (Let’s face it, he’s more likely to see your tweet than your message to the White House comment line.)
Show your support for Dar Al-Farooq via a GoFundMe campaign. While the center has since repaired the damage from the bombing, it was separately burglarized in October 2017 by two people wearing ape masks.
Connect with and support the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and the Islamic Society of North America.
Follow the work of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has documented more than 950 currently active hate groups nationwide.
