Associated Press
LEWISTON, Maine, July 12 – Community and church leaders expressed outrage Wednesday at an incident in which a man rolled a frozen pig’s head into a mosque frequented by Somali immigrants.
Brent Matthews, 33, was charged with desecration of a place of worship following the July 3 incident. He remains free on bail, and told police he intended it as a joke.
Joined at a demonstration Wednesday by Maine Gov. John Baldacci, Christian, Muslim and Jewish religious leaders condemned the incident.
“Our message is simple: An attack on any house of worship is an attack on all houses of worship,” Rabbi Hillel Katzir told a gathering of about 150 people.
The state’s attorney general is reviewing the case to determine whether to prosecute Matthews under Maine’s civil rights statute. If found guilty, he could be fined and ordered to stay away from the mosque and the city’s Muslim community.
The FBI is investigation whether federal hate crimes laws were violated.
Matthew’s attorney, James Howaniec, declined comment Wednesday.
Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the pig’s head incident fits with what he sees as a pattern in the United States of vandalism against mosques, with incidents in Indiana, Arizona, and Maryland. Muslims are forbidden from eating pork.
According to FBI statistics, hate crimes against individual Muslims have declined since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. In 2001, there was a high of 366 cases, and the figure has steadily declined to 32 in 2005, said FBI spokesman Bill Carter.
Lewiston is home to more than 2,000 Somali refugees, who began moving there in 2001 for affordable housing. The following year, Mayor Larry Raymond created a furor by asking Somali community leaders to stop the influx.
This week, the state attorney general filed a civil complaint against a white woman who is accused of spitting on a Somali man and using racial slurs in a traffic confrontation last November in Lewiston.
Abdi Sheikh, the leader of the Lewiston mosque, said he is gratified by the community’s response Wednesday.
“It’s a good step, a first step. I think something good will come about,” he said.
Source: AP, July 12, 2006
