Community Shows Support After Mosques Are Vandalized

Rasa - Two local mosques are seeing an outpouring of support from the community after they were vandalized with spray paint.

News ID: 424502

Date: 22 October 2016 - 23:02

RNA - Two local mosques are seeing an outpouring of support from the community after they were vandalized with spray paint.

"I opened this [card], and I'm surprised," Islam Board Member Hisham Yasin said. "There's a twenty dollar donation. That's awesome. That's Fort Smith, and that's the people of Fort Smith."

After hateful words were spray painted all over his place of worship, Yasin said the community has gone above and beyond to show their support.

"We have a lot of support of people we don't know," Yasin said. "They stop by here, they give the support to us. They offer to clean up, they offer donations, they sent flowers, they sent messages and emails."

The community showed that the suspected vandals don't represent the city.

"Our Quran said you may hate something that happened to you, but actually that's a good thing," Yasin said.

He even invites the suspects caught in this surveillance video to come to the mosque to learn about Islam.

"They are welcome to come," Yasin said. "They are welcome to sit. They can ask any kind of question they want and we will answer them with love and peace."

Another mosque was also vandalized this week. The FBI is now involved in the investigation and police consider the cases connected.

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