Tavari Abdul Hakeem, second from left, and other Muslims rally near the Joel W. Solomon Federal building on July 13, 2015 to protest what they see as light treatment of Robert Doggart, who plotted to murder Muslims in Islamberg, N.Y.
NASHVILLE – The nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization on Saturday called for federal officials to launch hate-crime investigations into incidents involving two mosques in Johnson City, Tenn., and Roanoke, Va.
Ibriahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in an interview Saturday that an online arson threat against the Johnson City mosque and vandalism at the mosque in Roanoke reflect a rise in Islamophobia in some communities following the July 16 shooting rampage in Chattanooga, during which four Marines and a Navy petty officer were killed.
The gunman, 24-year-old Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez of Hixson, was killed during a confrontation with Chattanooga police. The FBI is treating Abdulazeez as a “homegrown violent extremist” who appears to have acted alone.
“We’ve seen a steady uptick in the number of incidents targeting Muslims and their institutions nationwide” due to attacks earlier this year on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, Hooper said.
“Obviously, [Chattanooga] has fed into that overall atmosphere of Islamophobia in our nation,” said Hooper, whose group quickly condemned the Chattanooga slayings when news broke of the shootings. “That and, quite frankly, we’re not getting any push-back from public officials in terms of public support at the national level, particularly for the Muslim community.”