Over the weekend, an explosion at a Minnesota mosque—the Dar Al-Farooq Islamic Center—was reported. No one was hurt during the explosion, and it’s recently come out that a room of the mosque was damaged, but that was the extent of it.
Throughout the weekend, more information has come to light as the FBI gets its investigation underway.
The mosque’s executive director told the Minnesota Star Tribune that the center occasionally received phone calls and emails that were threatening and Islamophobic.
The Muslim American Society of Minnesota said someone threw an explosive into the imam’s office around the time of the first prayer of the day, when about 15 people were at the mosque. The Minnesota branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Muslim American Society are both offering cash rewards for information on the suspects that leads to an arrest. Witnesses say that they saw a pickup truck leaving the scene after the explosion.
Yesterday, Minnesota’s governor, Mark Dayton, called the attack a hate crime and “an act of terrorism.”
“The destruction done to this sacred site is just unthinkable, unforgivable. I hope and pray the perpetrator will be caught and prosecuted to the full extent of the law,” Dayton told the crowd.
Dayton visited the site with a group of public officials that included a senator, a mayor and state representatives.
Last year, Minnesota saw a record-high number of anti-Muslim incidents.