Armed with a machete and bacon, a Florida man vandalized a mosque in the community of Titusville. Police say the culprit is still on the loose.
The man was detected by security cameras of The Islamic Society of Central Florida Masjid Al-Munin Mosque around 11 p.m. on Friday. The video shows him entering the mosque, pulling a machete out of his bag, and using it to cause damage to the mosque. Bacon - which cannot be eaten according to the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed - was left on the doorstep.
"We are calling for a local, state, and federal hate crime investigation of the vandalism and attempted desecration of this Titusville mosque - the latest such incident in a recent spike in attacks on Muslim houses of worships nationwide," said Rasha Mubarak, the Orlando regional coordinator for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), according to Central Florida News.
The Muslim community of Titusville, 40 miles east of Orlando, has not previously experienced an attack of this kind. "You can't help but feel this is a hateful act," said Muhammad Musri, who oversees 10 mosques for the Islamic Society of Central Brevard, according to Florida Today. "All of the negative media, the politicians who want to ban Muslims, close mosques ... messages like that motivate people who have an illness in their heart."
CAIR reported 71 "mosque incidents" from January to Dec. 16 of 2015. Twenty-nine of those incidents included damage or vandalism of some kind. The CAIR press release says this is the highest rate of anti-Muslim crime ever recorded.
Two similar events of vandalism using pork products occurred in recent weeks. Surveillance cameras caught a man in Las Vegas wrapping raw bacon around the handles of a mosque on Dec. 17. A severed pig's head was left on the doorstep of a Philadelphia mosque on Dec. 7.
