AhlulBayt News Agency (ABNA): A mosque in Mississauga was targeted by a suspected hate crime on Sunday night, when someone threw two rocks through its window, shattering the glass.
The incident occurred on the same day as the National Day of Remembrance of the Quebec City Mosque Attack and Action Against Islamophobia, which marks four years since a gunman killed six people and injured 19 others at a mosque in Quebec City.
Peel Regional Police are investigating the vandalism as a hate-motivated crime and are looking for the perpetrator, who was captured on the mosque's security camera, CBC News reported.
The video shows a person approaching the Islamic Centre of Mississauga, hurling two rocks at the window, and fleeing the scene, according to a press release from the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM).
"That this latest attack in Mississauga happened on such an anniversary, when we were trying our best to reflect on how to honour the victims and survivors, serves as a chilling reminder that violent Islamophobia is still very much alive in Canada," said NCCM CEO Stephen Brown in the release.
No one was hurt in the incident.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also expressed his solidarity with the mosque and denounced the attack as "unacceptable". "Islamophobia has no place in any of our communities," he said on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. "The attack against a Mississauga mosque earlier this week is cowardly, disturbing, and unacceptable. I condemn it in the strongest terms possible."
The NCCM said the attack was part of a worrying trend of rising Islamophobic hate across the country, which has been exacerbated by the ongoing Israeli military aggression on the besieged Gaza Strip.
The war, which began on October 7, has claimed the lives of 27,000 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, and displaced nearly the entire population of 2.3 million.
Rights advocates have reported an increase in anti-Muslim incidents and rhetoric in many parts of the world since the start of the conflict.
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