Janet Levy:  There’s much more to the San Diego mosque shooting…

The perpetrators who killed three people at the Islamic Center of San Diego (ICSD) hated Jews and blacks, as their writings reveal.

The ICSD imam and several congregants assisted and financially supported Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, two of the 9/11 hijackers, who were regular worshippers at the mosque, and celebrated the Hamas killers who carried out the October 7th Massacre.

Extremist Wahhabi literature calling for intolerance, hatred of non-Muslims, and jihad was found in the mosque.

The FBI believes the ICSD laundered millions of dollars from Saudi Arabia to businesses linked to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

One attendee joined Al-Shabaab.

Congregants were encouraged to make Jews uncomfortable on campus, shout down Jewish and Israeli faculty, and vandalize campus buildings.

Clearly, there’s much more to this situation than meets the eye.

About That San Diego Mosque…

By Hugh Fitzgerald | May 23, 2026

Islamic Center of San Diego a few hours after the 2026 shooting by Leonard LMT, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0

The Muslims at the San Diego mosque where two teenagers killed three people before killing themselves have been all over the airwaves, mourning their dead and insisting that a stop must be put to anti-Muslim sentiments expressed online. They would like us to forget that the two killers were beavis-and-butthead equal opportunity lunatics, who left behind written material showing that they were just as much antisemitic and anti-black as they were anti-Muslim. Noting that fact spoils the narrative of innocent Muslims who, we are expected to believe on the basis of this attack, are the main victims of “hate crimes” in America. Both the imam, and several of the mosque’s worshippers, have troubling histories, including financial support for two of the 9/11 hijackers, and praise for the “resistance” of the Hamas killers who carried out the atrocities on October 7, 2023.

More about the San Diego mosque can be found in an article here: “The San Diego mosque’s unsavory history and a demographic detail,” by Andrea Widburg, American Thinker, May 19, 2026:

Here are the bare bones of yesterday’s story: Two teens traveled to a well-known mosque in San Diego, shot three people to death, and then took their own lives. I’m sorry that they avoided justice before the law for what they did, and they certainly would have gotten it, given that in California, their target was a protected class. A civilized society cannot survive extremists engaging in targeted assassinations.

Still, that’s not the focus of this post. Instead, I want to point out two interesting things that won’t be highlighted in media reports.

First, this mosque was not a nice place in terms of traditional American norms. Amy Mek has been tracking the Islamic Center of San Diego for a long time and notes that it has an interesting history when it comes to its practices and parishioners (emphasis in original):

I have long covered this mosque and am very familiar with its shocking, decades-long track record of terror ties (9/11 hijackers) and extremism.

– A 2005 investigation by the Center for Religious Freedom (Freedom House) identified the ICSD as one of only a handful of U.S. mosques found in possession of Saudi government-published “hate ideology” materials, extremist Wahhabi literature filled with calls for intolerance, hatred of non-Muslims, and jihad.

-A congressional inquiry into the 9/11 attacks revealed the FBI believed the San Diego mosque was responsible for laundering millions of dollars in cash from Saudi Arabia to the Al Barakat Trading Company and other businesses tied directly to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

* Two of the 9/11 hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, regularly worshipped at the ICSD before they helped crash American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon.

Fellow worshippers assisted them in obtaining Social Security cards, driver’s licenses, purchasing a car, and securing local housing.

The pair even accessed funds wired from the nephew of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed through a personal bank account belonging to an ICSD administrator.

– Jehad Serwan Mostafa, an American-born San Diegan and now one of the most wanted terrorists in the world, was a regular attendee at the ICSD. He later joined al-Shabaab (al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Somalia), where he rose to senior leadership. Current head Imam Taha Hassane (who has led the mosque since shortly after 9/11) claimed he was “shocked” to learn of Mostafa’s extremism.

– Yet just the day after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre in Israel, Imam Hassane posted on Instagram (now deleted):

“Resistance is the only option for a people under occupation.”

In an October 20 sermon he doubled down:

“Resistance is justified… resistance when people are occupied becomes a human right.”…

There was no Israeli “occupation” of Gaza in 2023. Every last Israeli had left Gaza in 2005.

In December 2023, Taher Herzallah of the Hamas-linked American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) spoke at the ICSD and told the congregation to make Zionists feel “very uncomfortable on campus.”

And Muslims have been following Herzallah’s instruction, encouraging students on campuses to set up pro-Hamas encampments, to chant “globalize the Intifada” and “death, death to the IDF,” to invade and vandalize campus buildings, to shout down Jewish and Israeli faculty members , and to surround Jewish students to prevent their free movement.

* He explicitly urged them to follow the example of the Gazans on October 7….

That can only mean he wants to encourage violent attacks on Jewish students and faculty.

None of that means the shooting was justified. I note it only because perhaps the mosque’s sudden prominence will make Americans aware of a very powerful local chapter of Islamism that promotes decidedly un-American and often anti-American values. And if they grow curious, they might discover that the nice neighborhood mosque near them, the one where the smiling Imam makes appearances at ecumenical events with the local rabbi, priests, and ministers, isn’t so nice after all.

Well, now the San Diego mosque will have had its fleeting place in the sun, with the imam giving television interviews, and mosque members telling us how they are still trying to “process” the attack, while local Christian and Jewish clergy will hasten to offer their support to their “Muslim brother and sisters,” while many politicians, and not only in California, will express their solidarity with the Muslims at the mosque, declaring over and over again that “hatred of Muslims has no place in America,” and vowing to provide more security for mosques. This will lead to more censoring online even of rational, measured, evidence-based criticism of Muslims and of Islam. Of course there will be the usual interfaith vigils. But when there are attacks on Jewish targets, including synagogues, no Muslims make statements in solidarity or join interfaith vigils.

Few in the media will take the occasion to point out that Muslims are far less likely to be the target of “hate crimes” than Jews or Christians. Jews make up 2% of the American population, but according to the FBI, 70% of all hate crimes are directed at Jews. Muslims make up 1.5% of the population, but 9% of the victims of hate crimes are Muslims. And who, in the wake of the three people killed at the mosque, including Amin Abdullah, the security guard, a revert to Islam whose former name was Brian Climax, will dare to point out the imam’s support for the Hamas attackers who swept into Israel on October 7, 2023, or note the mosque’s connection to two of the 9/11 hijackers?