Fear, anger after California massacre
ATMOSPHERE HAS CHANGED AS A RESULT OF TERRORIST ATTACKS IN PARIS AND SAN BERNARDINO, MUSLIMS SAY
The terrorist attack has left this community rattled and fearful. A routine mall burglary in neighbouring Riverside last week set off a social-mediaenhanced rumour of another mass shooting. In just half an hour, 350 people called police in a panic.
The post-massacre atmosphere has also provoked anxiety among Muslims in this part of Southern California. On Friday, an arsonist started a fire with a Molotov cocktail in a lobby of a mosque in the desert town of Coachella. And in Redlands, someone with a Sharpie wrote an abuse against Muslims on the boarded-up exterior of the apartment where the husband and wife terrorists had lived.
Yousuf Bhaghani, the president of the board of a mosque in the city of Corona, said that almost every night, someone drives by and shouts hateful messages — such as “Go home, terrorists!”
At the same time, there have been efforts at healing. That included a gathering on Friday night in which 650 people from a variety of religious faiths gathered at that same mosque and heard speakers condemn bigotry, racism and extremism.
Muslims spoke of their pride in being Americans and their dismay at the atrocities committed by terrorists.
“We have always made sure to keep an eye on anything unusual,” Bhaghani said before the public gathering. “We are vigilant of anyone who will have any intention to hurt somebody else. We keep our eyes open.”
Authorities are probing whether Syed Rizwan Farouk and Tashfeen Malek, the couple who killed 14 people and were later slain in a gun battle with police, were part of a broader network, which potentially could mean that plotters remain on the loose. Enrique Marquez, a friend and neighbour of Farouk’s who purchased weapons used in the shooting, is being questioned by the FBI.
Corona is a vast suburb of Los Angeles, with the usual traffic jams and noisy freeways. It is framed by soaring mountains.
Near the Inland Regional Centre, where Farouk and Malek went on their rampage, people gathered on Saturday at a makeshift memorial. “I think people are angry,” said Virginia Nelson, who had picked up her sister at the airport and stopped to see the massacre site.
Atmosphere
The Inland Empire, as this area is known, is a place for people on a budget, families with steady employment but not wealth. The low housing prices have drawn immigrants of many nationalities, plus their firstgeneration offspring. In Corona, an Episcopal church is a short stroll from the Islamic Society of Corona-Norco mosque, which is expanding and has 5,000 people at holiday prayer services — so many that they have to worship outside in a public park.
Many of the Muslims who came to the Corona mosque on Friday said they had never experienced any prejudice or hatred. But many also said that the atmosphere has changed as a result of the terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino and the inflammatory rhetoric from GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump, among others.
“Dad, should I tell people I’m a Muslim?” a 9-year-old girl asked her father, Mohammad Halisi, a Jordanian-born local businessman, one day last week after school, Halisi said. He told her to respond that she is a Muslim, and that there are good and bad people in every religion.
“I love this country. I will die for this country if I have to defend it,” Halisi said.