San Diego, CA
San Diego’s Muslim community picks up the pieces after mass shooting: ‘We’re just your neighbors’
Teacher’s assistant Iman Khatib was administering tests at the elementary school inside the Islamic Center of San Diego (ICSD) when she heard the bangs. She locked the classroom door, turned off the lights, silenced her phone and walkie-talkie, and crawled under a desk with her co-worker.
In the preschool classrooms nearby, three- and four-year-olds did the same – staying completely silent, hiding in corners, following the protocols they had been taught during drills. Outside, the first-grade class was at recess when the first shot rang out.
“We were so grateful that we made it out alive,” Khatib said two days later. “None of us are sleeping. We don’t want to relive the things that we saw.”
When police evacuated the staff and students, they passed the body of the security guard, Amin Abdullah, lying on the ground in front of the mosque. When the shooting started, he radioed the lockdown, returned fire, and kept the two teenage gunmen from reaching the approximately 140 children and 20 staff members who were steps away in the school.
Also killed were Mansour Kaziha, the manager of the mosque store, and Nader Awad, who was across the street and ran over when he heard the shots; his wife is a kindergarten teacher at the school. The attack is being investigated as a hate crime.
At a press conference held the day after the attack, Abdullah’s daughter Hawaa stood before cameras surrounded by her siblings. “My dad was my role model and my best friend,” she said.
She shared that she had just received her teaching credentials last week, and her father couldn’t be there because he was working at the center. “He was even afraid to go take meal breaks because he was afraid something would happen if he stepped away from the Islamic center,” Abdullah told the crowd through tears.
A father of eight who was a convert to Islam, Abdullah had been the first face anyone saw at the ICSD for years. His dedication to the community reflected the ethos of the center. For decades, the ICSD has kept its campus accessible as one of the most deliberately welcoming Muslim institutions in the country despite being tested by anti-Muslim backlash. Now it has been tested by the worst kind of violence.
“It’s a very, very close-knit, welcoming community,” said Khatib. “Everybody that has come to ICSD has felt at home here.”
The Islamic Center of San Diego is the largest mosque in San Diego county, serving a congregation that spans thousands and more than a dozen nationalities. It runs an elementary school from preschool to third grade, holds five daily prayers and has spent the last two decades building one of the most extensive interfaith networks of any Muslim institution in the country.
The mosque broke ground in 1986 in Clairemont, an inland working-class neighborhood, and opened three years later under the name Masjid Abi Bakr Al Siddiq. In 1991, as American forces mobilized for the Gulf war, someone planted a defective bomb at the mosque. No one was hurt.
Taha Hassane, imam and director of the ICSD, arrived in the US from Algeria in 2001 – mere weeks before the September 11 attacks. Three years later, he would lead a congregation still living in the shadow of the worst terrorist attack on US soil in American history. Hassane’s response was to open the doors of the mosque wider.
“We have failed to identify ourselves, to introduce ourselves to our neighbors,” Hassane told NPR on the 10th anniversary of the attacks. “We have failed to build strong bridges of understanding and respect.”
He began hosting interfaith meetings, joined civic groups, took a seat on the Muslim American advisory board of the San Diego police department and joined the interfaith advisory board of the San Diego district attorney’s office. He decided that Friday sermons would be conducted in English because no single immigrant language could serve a congregation drawn from across the world.
On the morning of the shooting, a group of non-Muslims was inside the center on a tour, learning about Islam.
“American Muslim institutions almost uniformly aspire to openness, to be a good neighbor, connecting with others, working on the common good, and it is part of the inheritance of Muslims building religious life inside a pluralist society,” Hatem Albazian, director of the Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project at UC Berkeley, said. “But very few have committed to it as completely, as publicly, and for as long as ICSD.”
Albazian has known Hassane personally and visited the center many times. “The doors are literally unlocked between prayers. These are deliberate choices sustained over decades, in the face of considerable institutional and increasing societal pressure to retreat behind security perimeters.”
That pressure intensified sharply after 7 October 2023, when Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel that killed approximately 1,200 people, triggering an Israeli military campaign in Gaza that has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians – a death toll that advocates say is likely an undercount – and a wave of anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian sentiment across the US.
Imam Hassane said he saw students being bullied at school because of their names, because they were Muslim or Palestinian. In 2023, more than 50 anti-Muslim fliers were posted on trees and fencing across the campus. Hassane and his family faced sustained criticism over social media posts about the war in Gaza.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) recorded 8,683 anti-Muslim complaints in 2025 – the highest annual total since the organization began tracking in 1996. After the attack on Monday, investigators found hate speech written on one of the weapons the shooters carried and racial ideology in a suicide note.
Albazian, who has spent decades documenting Islamophobia in the US, said the threat has changed shape significantly since the years after September 11. The backlash back then, he said, was largely driven by the government – watchlists, surveillance and immigration enforcement. Street-level violence was real but scattered, and officials at least kept their distance, rhetorically, from vigilantes.
What is happening now is different, he said: “The rhetoric that was previously confined to the fringe – that Islam is not a religion, that Muslims are a civilizational threat, that mosques are forward operating bases – is now spoken openly from the floor of Congress.” The internet, he added, has made radicalization faster and easier than anything that existed two decades ago: two teenagers exchanged manifestos and turned ideology into a mass shooting.
When San Diego’s mayor, Todd Gloria, stepped to the podium at Monday’s press conference, a woman in the crowd cut him off before he could finish his opening remarks. “This is a direct result of your leadership,” she shouted. “Our Muslim brothers and sisters have been talking to you for how long?”
The outburst captured a frustration years in the making. After 7 October 2023, Gloria declared that “San Diego stands with the people of Israel” – a statement Muslim advocates said centered on Israeli suffering while ignoring rising Islamophobia and Palestinian civilian deaths.
“In the last few days, other centers have received threatening voicemails and hate messages,” Tazheen Nizam, executive director of Cair San Diego, said. “There are 22 other mosques in San Diego county. It is imperative for elected officials to come forward – not just with the physical aspect of security, but the human and the manpower aspect as well.”
Nizam also raised concerns about federal security funding, noting that mosques in San Diego received no money in the last cycle of the Department of Homeland Security’s grant program. In a letter sent to the DHS secretary, Markwayne Mullin, after the shooting, Cair called on the department to brief Muslim community leaders on steps being taken to protect mosques. “The agencies owe us this support,” Nizam said. “I’m demanding what is rightfully mine. As a taxpayer, these services are ensured to us.”
Two days after the shooting, staff members returned to the mosque in pairs to retrieve personal items left behind during the evacuation. They walked through broken doors and past scattered school supplies. The children’s backpacks were still there. Their lunchboxes were still on the playground. Afterward, the staff gathered at the home of the kindergarten teacher – whose husband was killed in ICSD’s parking lot – and sat together on her couch. Amin Abdullah’s sister, herself a police officer who had worked security at the mosque, was also there. The staff thanked her for what her family had given the community.
“Being together was exactly what we needed,” Khatib said. “We didn’t realize it until we were just hugging each other.”
The night after the shooting, hundreds of people gathered at the Lindbergh neighborhood park – just blocks from the mosque – for an interfaith vigil organized by the ICSD and Cair San Diego. Faith leaders from across the region stood alongside Imam Hassane and elected officials to honor the three men.
“Hate and bigotry arise from ignorance,” said Nizham, who has been part of the ICSD’s congregation for years. “Come to an Islamic center. Learn about Muslims. We’re trying to put a roof over our heads, send our kids to school. We’re just your neighbors.”
On Wednesday morning, the mosque resumed its five daily prayers, though the administration office, playgrounds and school remain closed. A community fundraiser for the victims has raised more than $3m.
Khatib said the staff intended to reunite children with their belongings and was taking steps to move forward, one day at a time. While classes are effectively canceled for the remainder of the year, the staff is committed to ensuring the children are sent off with positive memories to help provide closure.
“The ones who pay the ultimate price are the children,” said Khatib. “This is not a world that children should have to live in.”
Learning about the shooting in San Diego has been especially hard for the local Muslim community. The imam of the mosque that was attacked in San Diego was also a longtime imam in Colorado, so many people know him in the state.
Eliot “L.P.” Howe has been a Muslim for about four months.
“It’s definitely been interesting,” Howe told CBS Colorado. “Alhamdulillah, I’ve met really great people and connected with people I really admire a lot, and have been praying five times a day.”
But Howe says she has noticed some people treat her differently.
“Walking around my neighborhood in the Highlands of Denver, I think it’s more common that people will look away from me, like really fast,” Howe said.
It’s something Linda Amin Badwan has been dealing with her whole life as a person born to a Muslim family.
“I haven’t felt safe in years to be honest,” Badwan told CBS Colorado. “I have been yelled at, at the supermarket recently, in front of my older son. I was told to, ‘Go back to my f ‘n country.’”
That’s why they were saddened but not surprised that two gunman opened fire at a mosque and Islamic school in San Diego. They say anti-Muslim rhetoric is on the rise.
“We see it from our leaders,” Badwan said. “We see it from people in the community who you would expect to be role models.”
Democratic state Sen. Iman Jodeh is a spokesperson for the Colorado Muslim Society. She says the shooting in San Diego has made the Colorado Muslim community feel unsafe during one the holiest times of the year in the religion.
“We should be asking ourselves, ‘What do we think would happen?’” Jodeh told CBS Colorado.
Jodeh says, in response, mosques around the Denver metro area have stepped up security
“When the threat of violence happens to our brothers and sisters in any other mosque, any other state, we understand that, yes, there is heightened security for us, but that does not deter us from going and worshipping,” Jodeh said.
Jodeh, Badwan and Howe say they all hope leaders will finally acknowledge the harm anti-Muslim rhetoric causes.
“I know a lot of conversation happens around security, and that’s just a Band-Aid,” Badwan said. “What we really need is to have more understanding and communication between one another.”
San Diego, CA
Jewish American Heritage Month: San Diego’s Jewish community reflects city’s diversity in culture and faith
SAN DIEGO (KGTV) – San Diego is home to 100,000 people who identify as Jewish, making up about 2% of the city’s population — and the data and the people behind it reveal a community as diverse as the city itself.
The Jewish Federation’s most recent survey found that 18% of San Diego’s Jewish community identifies as Hispanic or as a person of color. Nearly a quarter — 23% — regularly speak a language other than English at home, and 17% of Jewish households include someone born outside the United States, including the USSR, Israel, Latin America, Europe, South Africa, and Mexico.
Heidi Gantwerk, the President and CEO of the Jewish Federation, said the community’s diversity is reflected in everything from food to faith.
“It’s wonderful. The foods are different, and the way they say the prayers is different. The way they think about the holidays is different.”
“And they all bring their own rich cultural traditions and history with them, which makes for a really exciting blend of different practices – cultural and religious both,” Gantwerk said.
Half of San Diego’s Jewish community does not identify with any specific denomination. More than half — 51% — of Jewish couples are in interfaith relationships.
“If you ask people what Judaism is, what being Jewish means to them, religion is not the first thing many people will say,” Gantwerk explains.
“We have an expression we talk about – Jewish peoplehood; to be part of the Jewish people. That has historical implications. Cultural implications. Religious implications. Genealogical implications. And there are a lot of people in SD who feel very strongly that they are part of what we call K’lal Yisroel, part of the Jewish people, but they’re not religious.”
Sixteen percent identify as LGBTQ+, and 30% have lived in San Diego for less than a decade. The Jewish population also skews slightly older than San Diego overall, with 27% above the age of 65.
Beyond the numbers, individual congregations reflect that diversity firsthand. Ohr Shalom Synagogue, located in Bankers Hill, recently celebrated 100 years in its historic building. The congregation draws members from around the world, including some who cross the border to attend services.
One member said the congregation’s diversity is what makes it feel like home.
“The fact that we’re able to hold a multitude of being, ways of expressing, and ways of really holding each other, is amazing! And I really think that goes to the heart of what the US is traditionally about,” said Alex Van Frank, whose family has roots in Mexico and Europe.
“It’s really a coming together of a lot of different things to make this really sweet, I dunno, melody of friendships that you wouldn’t otherwise find,” she said.
Gantwerk adds that a look at some other numbers breaks the stereotypes commonly associated with Judaism.
“People have the impression that all Jews are wealthy,” she says. “That’s a trope, and it’s false. We are just as economically diverse as every other community. 15% of our Jewish community is struggling every day to make ends meet.”
Van Frank says that rich diversity gives the Jewish community a lot to share with San Diego at large.
“We are open to sharing some of our values, like education and taking care of community, family, and friends. I think these are the types of things that permeate living in society. And all of our collective responsibility to each other to be in community…
“We practice by living. And living our Jewishness means we are out in the community with everyone else as well. And we are helping to improve the world – Tikkun Olam. I think that’s a very important thing. I know a lot of people outside the (Jewish) community also try to make the world a better place. For us that’s a driving force.
This reporting is part of coverage of San Diego’s Jewish community during Jewish American Heritage Month. It grew out of ABC 10News Anchor Jared Aarons’ participation in the Karsh Fellowship — the nation’s first and only fellowship dedicated to journalism about Jewish topics. The fellowship included three weekends of learning in Los Angeles, New York and Washington, D.C., focused on covering issues from antisemitism to religion with greater depth and nuance.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
San Diego, CA
Teacher’s assistant at San Diego mosque recalls students’ bravery as gunmen banged on doors
SAN DIEGO — Like schools across the U.S., the Islamic Center of San Diego had sought to prepare its students for the possibility that a gunman could breach its walls.
When two armed teenagers stormed the mosque Monday — and those “active shooter” drills were put to the test — the young students in one classroom did exactly as they had practiced and “went straight to business,” their teacher’s assistant told NBC News.
“If they didn’t, then this could have been a different outcome,” said the assistant, Imani, who teaches second and third graders and asked to go by her first name.
Authorities have said the three people gunned down at the mosque, described on its website as San Diego County’s largest, were all outside. No one who was inside the center at the time — including dozens of students attending school — was injured, San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl has said.
One of the victims, security guard Amin Abdullah, fired at the teens when they sought to enter the mosque. He then used his radio to trigger a lockdown protocol, Wahl told reporters.
An imam at the mosque, Taha Hassane, said the center practices the lockdown drills multiple times every school year. Abdullah, he said, had been with the mosque for several years and knew about the system, which notifies teachers in their classrooms about active shooters.
The gunmen returned fire, as did Abdullah, who was killed in the gunfight, Wahl said.
Wahl said Abdullah “delayed, distracted and ultimately deterred” the shooters from gaining access to the areas of the mosque where there were as many as 140 kids.
As soon as Imani heard the gunfire, she recalled, she looked at a colleague, and they immediately knew what was happening.
“We told the kids this is not a shooting drill,” she said. “There is an active shooter, and let’s go.”
The students did as they had done in practice drills, she said, filing into a corner of the classroom, staying low to avoid windows and making sure the doors were shut and locked.
The students remained silent, even as they could hear the shooters banging on doors and trying to open them, she said.
“We are just so proud of them and their bravery,” Imani said, adding: “They held it together.”
Some of the security video from inside the mosque showed the gunmen moving from room to room, Wahl said, but those areas were empty. The shooters ultimately found two men — Mansour Kaziha and Nader Awad — in the parking lot outside and fatally shot them, Wahl said.
Each of those victims is “worth more than 1,000 men,” Imani said. “They are the reason all 140 of us made it out alive.”
Authorities said the gunmen, identified as Caleb Vazquez, 18, and Cain Clark, 17, are believed to have taken their own lives after they fled from the mosque.
Authorities investigating their motives are trying to authenticate a 75-page document that they may have written and posted online, law enforcement officials have said.
The material espouses anti-Islamic, antisemitic and anti-LGBTQ views, and it refers to accelerationism, a white supremacist ideology that promotes violence to speed the formation of a white ethnostate.
“These subjects did not discriminate on who they hated,” an FBI official, Mark Remily, told reporters Tuesday.
Morgan Chesky reported from San Diego and Tim Stelloh from Alameda, California.
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