San Diego Mosque Shooting Follows Decades of State-Enabled Anti-Muslim Violence
San Diego, California - May 19: Hawaa Abdullah, the daughter of Amin Abdullah, the security guard who was shot and killed at the Islamic Center of San Diego, speaks during a press conference on the shooting at Lindbergh Park, near the mosque, on Tuesday, May 19, 2026.(Photo by Kristian Carreon / The San Diego Union-Tribune via Getty Images)
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Speaking at a press conference one day after the shootings by two teenagers who killed three Muslim men at the Islamic Center of San Diego, Hawaa Abdullah, the daughter of slain victim Amin Abdullah, passionately conveyed how seriously her father took his job of protecting the community. With her voice trembling, Hawaa’s grief was palpable, especially as she recalled her father’s deep sense of responsibility as a security guard at the Islamic Center. She described how her father was so committed to his work that he would often skip meals during his shift because he feared that something might go wrong in the short time he was away. Mansour Kaziha and Nadir Awad, the other two victims of the shooting at the San Diego Islamic Center, were also remembered for their courage and standing between the shooters and their beloved community that was under attack.
The attackers left behind a manifesto that law enforcement described as including “generalized hate rhetoric.” This however, overlooked the fact that the manifesto’s specific language identified and differentiated between the targets of its vitriol. Moreover, the shooters’ manifesto expressed specific admiration for the Christchurch, New Zealand shooter — so much so, that the document itself was called “The New Crusade: Sons of Tarrant.”
In the wake of these shootings, Muslims have once again been reminded of the omnipresence of violence — not only from individuals within society, but also from a state that has relentlessly targeted Muslims and normalized the disposability of Muslim life. The demonizing rhetoric deployed by Trump, members of his administration, and members of Congress has helped create the conditions in which hatred toward Islam and Muslims can flourish. But these narratives — including those that are long-standing — have been deployed since the onset of the “War on Terror” and have done more than fuel interpersonal hostility; they have provided the ideological foundation and justification for the policies and laws that have devastated and destroyed Muslim lives.
The State Will Not Save Us From Hate
On the day of the attacks while Trump was at an event on health care affordability in D.C., the president was asked about his reaction to the attack and murders at the Islamic Center of San Diego. He responded saying, “They’re giving a briefing on it … and it’s a terrible situation. I’ve been given some early updates, but we’re going to be going back and looking at it very strongly.” Vice President JD Vance also commented on the attacks, saying, “I don’t know a single person who would say anything other than what I’m about to say, which is that that type of violence in the United States of America is reprehensible, and I encourage every single American to pray for everybody who was involved and affected by it.”
In the aftermath of societal violence — particularly violence rooted in identity-based targeting — communities often appeal to the state for recognition of the harm that has been inflicted upon them. These appeals seek to establish a public record of accountability and to hear political leaders’ affirmation of social and political norms that render such violence unacceptable.
While demands for official condemnations might seem logical — even necessary — to address the immediate viscerality of the violence, they can also absolve the state from the role it played in sanctioning this violence to begin with. But the language and construct of “hate” makes it possible to create a false distinction between the “extremists,” and the long-standing and increasingly normalized state violence. That’s why, for example, JD Vance could condemn the attack in San Diego without making any reference whatsoever to the violence that the administration he is part of has unleashed on Muslim communities.
In her article, “It Didn’t Begin in Hate: Why a Hate Crimes Framework Can’t Take Us to Abolition,” University of California Los Angeles Professor Sherene H. Razack interrogates the role that the construction of hate discourse plays in absolving the state of responsibility. To this end, Razack writes that “there is obvious political capital to be gained by employing hate as an analytic, capital related to the work hate performs in turning our gaze away from the structural and from historical injustice towards the psychosocial and even the biological… Through a focus on exceptional perpetrators with unique characteristics, hate as an analytic establishes the innocence of the state and of dominant collectivities.” In the case of appeals to the state and its institutions — particularly those that have proven to be acutely harmful — the construction of “hate” serves the purpose of not just positioning the views of the perpetrators as exceptional to the average member of society, it also promotes the facade that the state cannot be or is not ideologically aligned with the views of perpetrators.
As a case in point, the response of San Diego’s local government to the shootings illustrates precisely what Razack highlights: the contradiction of state officials condemning hate while simultaneously absolving themselves of responsibility for the very policies, practices, and political conditions that have helped produce and sustain it. On the day of the shootings at the Islamic Center in San Diego, Mayor Todd Gloria, along with law enforcement, held multiple press conferences condemning the shooting and offering support to the Muslim community. But some members of the Muslim community condemned the mayor’s presence and words because of their history with Garcia who, among other things, ignored their attempts to meet with him to share their concerns about Islamophobia and the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide of Palestinians. At the press conference, the mayor also applauded the use of surveillance technologies such as license plate readers, which not only failed to prevent the shootings, but also have targeted and harmed the Muslim community.
Nevertheless, a week after the attack on the Islamic Center of San Diego, an umbrella organization for many of the largest Muslim groups in the U.S. held a press briefing condemning the shootings and appealing to the state for condemnation and support. Throughout the press conference, speakers urged Trump and his administration to condemn the attack and its rootedness in anti-Muslim hate and called for the FBI to investigate the shooters. These appeals however, stopped short of demanding accountability from the administration, which has targeted Muslims via rhetoric and policy. Even where accountability demands were made in other contexts, if condemnation from political officials were to have any value in cases like the shooting in San Diego, then they would necessarily have to include the repudiation of the attack alongside an acknowledgement of the specific ways that the government has waged legal and political warfare against the Muslim community. But to appeal for protection to a president and administration that have ideologically staked and weaponized Islamophobia to justify and conduct state violence — including backing Israel’s genocide against Palestinians, launching a war on Iran without cause, and proudly supporting and implementing policies such as the “Muslim ban” — reveals the profound contradiction of seeking safety from institutions that have themselves been architects of anti-Muslim violence.
More problematically, other appeals to the state have served to legitimize its harmful institutions. For example, in an op-ed in The Hill titled “After a mosque shooting, American Muslims deserve comfort, not hate,” the author, who is a leader of another national Muslim organization, expressed disappointment at the relative silence and inaction by the FBI in addressing the San Diego Islamic Center shootings. While the author argues that “the FBI has a strong institutional record on hate crime investigation,” and that this “record is worth defending,” he ignores the fact that the FBI also has a strong institutional record of targeting and entrapping Muslims and other marginalized communities. That this appeal is rooted in a mythologized view of the FBI’s benevolence, obscures the contradiction of asking for support from the very institution that has long and directly targeted the Muslim community. It also reflects the prioritization of a strategy of legitimizing state institutions over genuinely protecting vulnerable communities.
Our Humanity Has No Contingencies
Unfortunately, what these appeals fundamentally reveal is the belief in the state as a source of safety and protection and a legitimate arbiter of justice. But what does it mean when communities continue to appeal to the state, which has historically and systematically shown emphatic support for their erasure? Rather than begging violent state institutions to protect Muslims, our communities should organize and facilitate conversations on how we can internally provide safety and security for each other. Afterall, the individuals who protected Muslims at the Islamic Center of San Diego on the day of the shooting in San Diego were not the police or the FBI but committed and heroic members of the community such as Amin Abdullah, who served as the security guard.
Of course, this does not minimize the need for accountability for violence targeting our communities, but we must recognize and claim our own humanity, dignity, and right to justice without seeking recognition or affirmation from the state.
If the last 25 years of the “war on terror” have taught us anything, it’s that state institutions are deeply complicit in the death and destruction of Muslim communities. Our task then is not to try to reform these institutions and engage them in ways that entrench their power, but rather to envision a different future where accountability for violence is not an option. We must also recognize that our collective liberation requires building forms of solidarity, care, and accountability rooted in our communities rather than investing our hopes in institutions that have historically sanctioned, enabled, or directly perpetrated violence against us.
In her powerful poem titled “This is Not a Humanizing Poem,” Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan writes about the demonizing ways that Muslims are ideologically constructed and the ways that they are forced to prove their humanity. In one of the most poignant lines in her poetic rebuttal, she asserts, “if you need me to prove my humanity then I’m not the one who is not human.” For Muslims, this forceful line should remind us that our humanity is not contingent on anything, least of all on recognition by the state.
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