Friday, July 14, 2006
LEWISTON, Maine (AP) — Earlier this month, Muslim men participating in a serene evening prayer ritual at Lewiston Auburn Islamic Center were sharply interrupted: A severed, frozen pig’s head, slightly larger than a basketball, was thrown into the mosque.
The man charged in the incident, 33-year-old Brent Matthews of Lewiston, told police it was a joke. But community leaders and others say the act was a hate crime, and the incident has heightened concerns that local discrimination against Somalis has not eased.
“Our message is simple: An attack on any house of worship is an attack on all houses of worship,” Rabbi Hillel Katzir told a group of about 150 Wednesday.
Muslims are prohibited from eating pork, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations contends the act was an insult to Islam. The Rev. Jodi Hayashida from First Universalist Church in Auburn said the incident was no harmless prank. Instead, she said it represented a type of “casual hatred” that demanded a response from the community.
Lewiston is home to more than 2,000 Somali refugees, who began moving there in 2001 for affordable housing. Their move to the former mill town of about 35,000 has not been without a few bumps along the way.
In 2002, then-Mayor Larry Raymond created a furor by asking Somali community leaders to stop the influx. White supremacists tried to hold a rally, but they were shouted down and residents rallied in support of the Somalis.
Four years later, though, it’s evident that tensions remain.
This week, the state attorney general filed a civil complaint against a white woman from Greene who’s accused of spitting on a Somali and using racial slurs in a traffic confrontation in November in Lewiston.
Matthews was charged with desecration of a place of worship, a misdemeanor, after the pig’s head incident. The attorney general is deciding whether to prosecute under Maine’s civil-rights statute. Also, the FBI has been conferring with local police to determine if federal hate-crime laws were violated.
Source: AP, July 14, 2006
