Michael
Wolfe was arrested on a charge of criminal mischief against a house of
worship on Monday after surveillance video showed a man using a machete
to break windows, lights and cameras at the Masjid Al-Munin mosque and
leaving raw bacon at the front door, Titusville police said in a brief
statement.
Anti-Muslim
sentiment has swelled in the United States after a young Muslim couple
inspired by Islamic State massacred 14 people on Dec. 2 in San
Bernardino, California, and after comments by some Republican
presidential candidates, according to Muslim leaders.
"While
we welcome the prompt arrest made by Titusville police department, we
urge that this case be prosecuted as a hate crime," Rasha Mubarak of the
Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a
national civil rights group, said on Tuesday.
The
use of pork in the vandalism qualifies as a hate crime because the
consumption of pork is forbidden by the religion and is frequently used
as a means of intimidation, according to Muslim leaders.
Police
in Titusville, about 14 miles (22.53 km) north of the Kennedy Space
Center in central Florida, released no further details on Wolfe’s
background or the arrest.Wolfe was being held on $2,000 bond. He has not entered a plea and could not be reached immediately for comment.
This was at least the third report in less than a month of vandals leaving pork products at U.S. mosques.
Last
month, wrapped bacon was left on the door handle of the
Masjid-e-Tawheed mosque in Las Vegas, and a pig's head was thrown from a
pickup truck near the Al-Aqsa Islamic Society in Philadelphia on Dec.
6, according to CAIR.
CAIR
said cases of damage, destruction, and vandalism of mosques, and
intimidation attempts reached a record high in 2015 since the
organization began tallying incidents in 2009.
(Editing by Curtis Skinner and Jeffrey Benkoe)
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