Rochester Hills mosque vandalized Friday night
No one was hurt; security camera captured the incident
The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community’s mosque in Rochester Hills was vandalized Friday night as children played inside following evening prayers.
No one was hurt in the incident, but the community is shaken, a mosque official said Saturday.
The mosque was nearly empty at the time of the incident, but some members and their children had stayed behind to play after evening prayers ended. The mosque has security cameras that captured the incident and showed the perpetrator smashing the front door, shattering the glass, with an unknown tool, according to the mosque.
Members didn’t discover the vandalism until they arrived for morning prayer at around 5:30 a.m. Saturday, said Muhammad Ahmad, director of outreach at Ahmadiyya Muslim Community of Michigan. Ahmadiyya is a revivalist movement within Islam founded in 1889.
“It’s scary because women are there, kids are there,” Ahmad said. “We generally feel very safe in this neighborhood, but this has shaken up everybody up, especially the kids.”
Ahmad has three children. He said they see hate crimes against Muslims on the news and this incident has made them scared to go to the mosque.
He said it’s especially difficult because people have only just started coming back in person due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and now they have to be extra vigilant.
They don’t know yet if it’s an isolated incident or part of something larger, but they’re working with police.
The Oakland County Sheriff 's Office, in a release Sunday, said surveillance footage shows a man walking the perimeter of the mosque about 9:30 p.m. Friday, and that a nearby Walgreens also had a window broken out about the
same time. It's unclear if the incidents are related, but detectives are investigating.
The prevalence of hate crimes against their community has been relatively low in the neighborhood, according to Mansoor Qureshi, vice president of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community's Michigan chapter.
In the 1980s, an Ahmadiyya center in the Detroit area was burned down and a member was murdered, which spurred the move to Rochester Hills in 2008, Qureshi said. Since then, there have been a few instances of verbal abuse in their facility, but the community generally has felt safe, he said.
After this incident, they’re having internal discussions about increasing their security.
“We want to have a little bit more discussion with our community, in general, to be careful,” Qureshi said. “Just kind of based on the environment and situation with this incident, this is the first time that something like this has occurred to this facility.”
Over the years, other mosques have been vandalized in Michigan.
Last month, a mosque in the Flint area, the Grand Blanc Islamic Center, was vandalized, according to a local advocacy group and NBC 25 News.
Last year, a mosque in Warren was vandalized. The Free Press reported at the time that the Al Ihsaan Islamic Center, also known as Ideal Islamic Center, had been opened a few months prior by immigrants from Bangladesh and the imam reported someone smashed several windows of the mosque with a hammer.
Worshippers told WDIV-TV the same mosque faced harassment this summer during prayers.
As the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community mosque continues to work with law enforcement to stay safe, Qureshi said he hopes nothing more sinister is at play and that people can discuss their differences rather than resorting to violence.
“We are welcoming people,” Qureshi said. “I know people are uncomfortable, but it is better to just get to know people so that, you know, even these isolated things don't happen.”