Besides serving as a place of worship and community center, the mosque in Bloomington, just south of Minneapolis, has a fitness center, gymnasiums for boys and girls, a football field and adjoins a city park, Omar said. He estimates the mosque holds up to 300 worshippers for Friday prayers. The community center also hosts computer classes, a basketball league, religious classes, lectures and other events.
“It’s a place that a family can come and get everything they need,” Omar said.
The mosque opened in 2011 at the site of a former elementary school in the suburb of about 85,000, and serves people primarily from the area’s large Somali community. Minnesota is home to the largest Somali community in the U.S., roughly 57,000 people, according to the latest census.
Some residents opposed the center’s opening, and complaints have been made about parking, noise and traffic, the Star Tribune reported. Omar said the center gets along with “92, 93 percent” of its neighbors.
And while the mosque has received threatening calls and messages, Deputy Bloomington Police Chief Mike Hartley said Sunday he was unaware of any hate crimes reported at the center.
Reports of anti-Muslim incidents in the U.S. are increasing, including arson attacks and vandalism at mosques, harassment of women wearing Muslim head coverings and bullying of Muslim schoolchildren. Also in Minnesota, an Islamic cemetery in Castle Rock Township recently reported it had been vandalized with spray painted profanities and swastikas.
A U.S. Department of Homeland Security statement on the Bloomington explosion says the department “fully supports the rights of all to freely and safely worship the faith of their choosing and we vigorously condemn such attacks on any religious institution.”
The reward for information leading to an arrest or conviction has grown to $24,000, said Asad Zaman, director of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota. The Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, said its national office is urging Islamic centers and mosques to step up security.
“If a bias motive is proven, this attack would represent another in a long list of hate incidents targeting Islamic institutions nationwide in recent months,” said Amir Malik, the local chapter’s civil rights director.
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Of course our dear leader has seen no reason to condemn or even comment on this act of terrorism.
Not a SINGLE WORD from Trump. He couldn’t even gin up enough effort to tweet the usual GOP ‘in our thoughts and prayers’.
This is what happens when you let 26% of our unthinking, pissed, ignorant eligible voters loose on the country
What’s wrong with you people? Why can’t you say Christian Extremists?
Does Trump even know about something if it doesn’t get airtime on Fox and Friends or Hannity or is covered in some conspiracy rant on Breitbart?
That said, I hope the local community can refind and reclaim a sense of balance and safety after such a potentially tragic/traumatic event.
Why should he? It’s a terrorist attack on US soil and aimed against religious freedom. The President is focusing on the nation’s priorities. Tweet, tweet.