The Islamic Center of San Diego locked its doors briefly after gunfire erupted on its campus, but it did not stay closed for long. Within days, the mosque that has spent two decades building bridges with its neighbors was back at prayers, its congregation determined to refuse the attackers their intended outcome: fear and retreat.
Three men were killed in the shooting. Amin Abdullah, the mosque's security guard, was found dead in front of the building after he radioed a lockdown and returned fire, preventing the two teenage gunmen from reaching approximately 140 children and 20 staff members sheltering inside the adjacent school. Mansour Kaziha, manager of the mosque store, and Nader Awad, a parent who ran over when he heard shots, were also killed. The attack is being investigated as a hate crime, with investigators finding hate speech on one of the weapons and racial ideology in a suicide note.
Iman Khatib, a teacher's assistant at the school, was administering tests when the bangs began. She locked her classroom, turned off lights and phones, and crawled under a desk with a co-worker. In nearby preschool classrooms, three- and four-year-olds did the same, staying silent and hiding in corners as they had been taught in drills. "We were so grateful that we made it out alive," Khatib said days later. "None of us are sleeping."
Abdullah's daughter Hawaa stood before cameras the day after the attack, flanked by her siblings. She had just received her teaching credentials the week before, credentials her father could not attend to celebrate. "He was even afraid to go take meal breaks because he was afraid something would happen if he stepped away from the Islamic center," she said through tears. Abdullah, a father of eight and a convert to Islam, had been the first face visitors encountered at the center for years.
The mosque, which opened in 1989 in the Clairemont neighborhood, is the largest in San Diego County, serving thousands across more than a dozen nationalities. Imam Taha Hassane arrived in the United States from Algeria in 2001, just weeks before September 11. Rather than close ranks, he chose the opposite path. He opened the mosque's doors wider.
Hassane began hosting interfaith meetings, joined civic groups, and took a seat on the Muslim American advisory board of the San Diego Police Department. He ordered Friday sermons conducted in English so no single immigrant language would exclude members of the congregation. On the morning of the shooting, a group of non-Muslims was inside the center on a tour.
"The doors are literally unlocked between prayers," said Hatem Albazian, director of the Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project at UC Berkeley. "These are deliberate choices sustained over decades, in the face of considerable institutional and increasing societal pressure to retreat behind security perimeters."
That pressure intensified dramatically after October 2023, when Hamas launched an attack on Israel that killed approximately 1,200 people, triggering an Israeli military campaign in Gaza that has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians. Anti-Muslim sentiment surged across the United States. In 2023, more than 50 anti-Muslim fliers were posted across the mosque's campus. Imam Hassane and his family faced sustained social media criticism over posts about the Gaza war.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations recorded 8,683 anti-Muslim complaints in 2025, the highest annual total since the organization began tracking in 1996. The nature of the threat has fundamentally changed, Albazian said. "The rhetoric that was previously confined to the fringe is now spoken openly from the floor of Congress," he noted, referring to claims that Islam is not a religion, that Muslims are a civilizational threat, and that mosques are military installations. The internet has made radicalization faster than anything two decades ago.
The shooting exposed frustrations that had been building for months. At Monday's press conference, when San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria stepped to the podium, a woman in the crowd interrupted him. "This is a direct result of your leadership," she shouted. "Our Muslim brothers and sisters have been talking to you for how long?" After October 2023, Gloria had declared that "San Diego stands with the people of Israel," a statement Muslim advocates said centered on Israeli suffering while ignoring rising Islamophobia and Palestinian deaths.
Tazheen Nizam, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations San Diego, raised concerns about security funding gaps. "Mosques in San Diego received no money in the last cycle of the Department of Homeland Security's grant program," she said. "The agencies owe us this support. I'm demanding what is rightfully mine. As a taxpayer, these services are ensured to us."
Two days after the shooting, staff members returned to the mosque in pairs to retrieve personal items. They walked past broken doors and scattered school supplies. Children's backpacks and lunchboxes still sat where they had been left. Afterward, staff gathered at the home of the kindergarten teacher whose husband had been killed in the mosque parking lot. Amin Abdullah's sister, herself a police officer who had worked security at the center, was also there. The staff thanked her for what her family had given the community.
"Being together was exactly what we needed," Khatib said. "We didn't realize it until we were just hugging each other."
The night after the shooting, hundreds gathered at a nearby park for an interfaith vigil. Faith leaders from across the region stood alongside Imam Hassane and elected officials to honor the three men killed.
"Hate and bigotry arise from ignorance," Nizam said at the vigil. "Come to an Islamic center. Learn about Muslims. We're trying to put a roof over our heads, send our kids to school. We're just your neighbors."
On Wednesday morning, the mosque resumed its five daily prayers. The administration office, playgrounds, and school remained closed, but the decision to reopen for prayer sent a clear message. A community fundraiser for the victims has raised more than three million dollars.
Classes are effectively canceled for the remainder of the year, but staff members are committed to reuniting children with their belongings and providing positive memories to help with closure. "The ones who pay the ultimate price are the children," Khatib said. "This is not a world that children should have to live in."
Author James Rodriguez: "A community that chose openness over security for two decades has earned the right to mourn without being told it should have been more afraid."
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