Organizers question whether federal authorities would investigate it as a hate crime

Ali said the local Muslim community would like to apply for federally funded grants through the Federal Emergency Management Agency that are tailored to nonprofits seeking security assistance. She said residents were unsure about seeking the assistance because of who is in government.

“Look at the culture and the environment that we live in. Do you want to bring that into your house [of worship]?” Ali said. “Because, will these people really protect you, or will they use it, as they have historically used it, to access what we do in our community?”

The center’s mosque draws about 25 people to prayer on most Fridays. It had no security cameras when the break-in occurred. The local Muslim community is working to find support for security improvements at houses of worship around Cincinnati, including the center.

Ali said she did not plan to approach the FBI about investigating the incident as a hate crime.

“I don’t have trust in authorities to find who’s behind this. We have had incidents where the largest mosque in Cincinnati was bombed,” Ali said.

In December 2005, two pipe bombs exploded outside Cincinnati’s Clifton mosque, causing significant damage to a door and windows. The explosions occurred two hours after worshippers had gathered to pray. No one has ever been charged in that attack.

“Our focus now is to get local authorities just to acknowledge it and condemn it and any acts of bias, intimidation [or] violation against the Muslim community and the Black community,” Ali said.

The Westwood Islamic Community Center houses a mosque and food pantry in an underserved, majority-Black neighborhood in west Cincinnati. Center leaders and local Muslim community members called the latest break-in a hate crime. Muslim leaders said no suspects had been apprehended.

The break-in occurred early Aug. 3. Nashid Shakir, a board member who has belonged to the center since the 1960s, said assailants used wire cutters to break through a wire barrier and a window and enter an office.

“They cut the wire and broke the window to get in. They broke into the office, too. It was total disarray,” Shakir said.

Shakir said valuables, including a surveillance camera and television monitors, were stolen. Profanity, including the word “die,” was written on a whiteboard. Glass was smashed on two posters displaying lines in Arabic from the Quran.

The center had also been broken into during the previous seven years. Shakir said racist comments were graffitied on the walls during that earlier incident.

“The police came out and they checked the boxes for making a report. But we haven’t had any follow-through,” Shakir said.

The incident took place amid what the source described as a rise in Arab and Muslim American politicians running for office and a series of Islamophobic comments from Republican politicians and far-right figures.

In Michigan, Democratic senatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed was targeted by Donald Trump and by conservative and rightwing voices after winning his primary on Aug. 4. El-Sayed is an epidemiologist who has called for abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement and ending U.S. military funding for Israel.

The Center for the Study of Organized Hate, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, reported that targeting of El-Sayed increased twentyfold after the election earlier this month.

On Aug. 10, Trump told reporters from the Oval Office, “we have jihadists being elected all over the place.”

Raqib Naik, the center’s executive director, said the organization had observed an organized campaign to generate fear and hysteria about Muslims for electoral gain, justify domestic policies and build support for foreign wars.

“What is particularly worrying is that bigotry once largely confined to fringe anti-Muslim groups is now being repeated and amplified from the highest office in the country, by elected officials, billionaires and major political influencers,” Naik said.

Naik also said the idea that Muslims are coming to “take over” America had become more mainstream. He described it as a continuation of post-9/11 Islamophobia that had become “uglier and more blatant.”

Naik said 65 members of Congress had formed a so-called “Sharia-Free America caucus.” Texas Republican representatives Keith Self and Chip Roy formed the caucus last December, and it has representatives from 17 states.

In March, the Council on American-Islamic Relations reported an unprecedented rise in Islamophobic incidents and discrimination nationwide during the previous year. In May, three people were killed by two attackers at a mosque in San Diego.

In Ohio, Somali Americans in particular have faced what the source described as Trump-fueled violence and immigration crackdowns. Last winter, ICE agents, rightwing influencers and other provocateurs went to childcare and other facilities run by Somali Americans in Columbus after Trump falsely claimed community members were “ripping off the country.”

Shakir said the wider Cincinnati community’s positive response had surprised him.

“I take what [Trump] says with a grain of salt even though I know there’s a part of the country that takes what he says as gospel,” Shakir said.