As US Muslims grieved in the wake of the fatal shooting at a San Diego mosque and Islamic centre, community leaders said they were heartbroken but not surprised by the attack.
Monday's shooting, which left three community members dead, in addition to the two shooters, took place amid a national proliferation in anti-Muslim rhetoric and hate incidents.
"For years, the Muslim communities across the country have experienced rising Islamophobia, anti-Muslim harassment, dehumanisation, threats and dangerous rhetoric that paints our communities as suspects, threatening, or somehow less deserving of dignity and safety. And we saw that," Tazheen Nizam, director of the San Diego chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said at a press conference on Tuesday.
Threats and attacks on Muslim Americans and their places of worship have spiked since the outbreak of Israel's war on Gaza in October 2023. This was exacerbated the following year with the second presidential election of Donald Trump, who has implemented a strict Muslim travel ban, overseen mass deportations, ordered the punishment of and mischaracterised anti-war protesters, and whose social media posts often contain hateful rhetoric.
A report by CAIR issued in March 2025 recorded the highest number of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab complaints, 8,658, in 2024, since it began publishing data in 1996. This marked a 7.4 per cent increase from the previous year, which had also seen record-high complaints with Israel's genocidal war on Gaza.
Days before the fatal shooting in San Diego, there were multiple reports of threats against US mosques, a common occurrence that rarely makes headlines, but has become unsettlingly common knowledge among many US Muslims.
"I've been worried about this for a long time," Mirvette Judeh, president of the Arab American Caucus of the California Democratic Party, told The New Arab . She noted that last month, there was a bomb threat at a mosque she attended in Southern California. “There are laws specific to protecting certain folks and not others – even the language around crimes and the way deaths are reported,” she said, referring to what many see as bias in news headlines on Arabs and Muslims.
She says she's concerned about algorithms that direct people toward hateful online material based on biases they might already have, which appears to be the case for the San Diego shooters, based on initial reports.
"If you're somebody who has doubts about our faith, there are algorithms that will make you hate us," Judeh said.
She says she's now worried about Muslims giving in to their fear and not speaking out or not going to the polls in the upcoming elections. This, she believes, is exactly what racists want.
Lara Loomer, an informal advisor to Trump, posted multiple times on social media following the fatal attack, falsehoods about the victims and suggested Muslims should be deported to ensure their safety.
"In light of the Islamic centre shooting today, I think it’s time to make sure Muslims are safe. The best way to ensure their safety is for our DHS Secretary… to deport every Muslim in America back to the Middle East where they can live in fully Islamic societies and blast their call to prayer without triggering Amercians [sic] into psychosis as a side effect of having their non-Islamic habitats disrupted by invasive species," she wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
"Let's make sure Muslims are safe. Send them back to the Middle East, where there's a mosque on every corner," she continued.
Leaders of San Diego's Muslim community are trying to send the opposite message, urging people not to be afraid.
At Tuesday's press conference, one of the leaders said, "Don't be intimidated, don't be scared. Come to the mosque. This is your place. And especially in this time when we need to be together."