University of Arizona students hurl insults, and litter, at mosque in Tucson

Rania Kanawati, a Syrian immigrant, was walking to her car after Friday Prayer last month at the Islamic Center of Tucson when a beer can landed right behind her, then another one fell by her side.

On another night at the mosque, Ahmed Meiloud, a PhD candidate from Mauritania who is the Islamic Center’s president, was leaving the building when someone yelled from a passing car, “Terrorist, go back to where you came from!”

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The diverse congregation of the Islamic Center — a squat copper-domed complex just outside the University of Arizona’s campus — has endured taunts and vandalism ever since hundreds of students moved into two private high-rise apartments next door three years ago. In at least one instance, a shower of crushed peanuts rained down on the mosque; more typically, cans and bottles are flung from apartment balconies, usually on the party nights of Friday and Saturday.

“Yes, these are students, usually drunken students, but these attacks aren’t random,” Mr Meiloud said. “We are the target.”

No one has been injured. But in light of the highly charged national debate about accepting Muslim refugees in the United States — as well as the mass shooting by two Muslim terrorists in San Bernardino, Calif., in December — tensions over the insults and vandalism here have run particularly high.

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“We can’t ignore the backdrop against which this is happening, with all the hate crimes against Muslims, all over the place,” said Imraan Siddiqi, the executive director of Arizona’s chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

In recent months, Islamophobic posters have appeared at American University; the University of California, Los Angeles; and other college campuses. At Virginia Tech, the message “We will kill all the Muslims” was scrawled on a bathroom wall. In October, an Indiana University student was arrested after trying to yank a Muslim woman’s head scarf as she dined outside a restaurant, according to the police in Bloomington, Ind.

The University of Arizona has a diverse student body, and students and professors described its culture as generally inclusive. But minority groups on campus say they are not immune from mistreatment and misconceptions.

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Meetings between faculty members and students were held in six campus cultural centers at the university during the fall, spurred by racially charged episodes at the University of Missouri and elsewhere. According to faculty notes on the meetings, gay students spoke of harassment by classmates, black students told of being steered away from disciplines and degrees that were perceived as white-only, and Asian students talked about “unhealthy generalizations,” in particular about Muslims.

Lynn Nadel, a professor of psychology and cognitive sciences and the chairman of the university’s faculty, said the meetings served as a call for action. “We don’t need to wait for the explosion to look around and find out for ourselves how we’re doing and how we must change,” he said.

Despite repeated efforts by the university and the managers of the apartment complex to stop the harassment of the mosque and its members, problems have persisted. Mumina Obeid, a premed student at the university and a Sunday school teacher at the Islamic Center, said that more than once she had picked up liquor bottles littering the turf where children play during recess.

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Ms Obeid, 20, who was born in Tucson to a Syrian father and a Mexican mother, said a 5-year-old boy had come up to her holding a can of chewing tobacco he found on the playground.

“What kind of message are we sending to our children when their place of worship is treated like a trash can?” she asked.

The high-rise rental complex, Sol y Luna, says it offers furnished apartments, a rooftop pool, a yoga garden and assigned garage parking, all within two blocks of the campus.

A company based in Pennsylvania, GMH Capital Partners, bought the property in the fall and has installed motion-sensitive cameras outside the buildings in an effort to catch offenders. Four residents were evicted under the previous owners, The Arizona Daily Star reported.

Last month, when classes at the university resumed and cans and bottles started crashing onto the mosque’s parking lot again, the landlord began considering whether to close the balconies.

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In a letter to tenants and their parents, Rand A Ginsburg, a senior vice president at GMH Capital Partners, threatened fines and more evictions, pledging zero tolerance for “actions involving violence or destructive behavior toward other human beings or organizations” and for “words or actions that reflect racial or religious hostility.”

The mosque functions as the university’s de facto Muslim center; the Muslim Student Association has an office there. It also serves professors and professionals, as well as immigrants and refugees from Syria, Iraq, Sudan and other countries.

“This is a very welcoming community,” said Ms Kanawati, who left Syria long ago and has been a member of the mosque for 23 years. “But there are exceptions.”

The Islamic Center moved to its current location in the 1990s, when the university, whose student body now numbers about 42,000, had roughly 10,000 fewer students. Back then, the tallest buildings in the neighborhood were a handful of stories high.

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As the university grew and a streetcar linking campus and downtown began operating, the city approved zoning changes allowing high-density buildings — to house students and keep them away from the residential neighborhoods surrounding campus, said Steve Kozachik, a city councilman representing the area.

On a recent Friday at the Islamic Center, a boisterous group of women gathered for a meal of homemade dolma, a stuffed vegetable dish, and store-made cake after evening prayers as their children chased one another in the men’s prayer hall.

Outside the center, Madalyn Lorber, 18, a sophomore who lives in the high-rise towers, said the only time she thought about the mosque next door was when she had a hard time finding street parking during prayer services on Friday afternoons.

“They keep to themselves,” Ms Lorber said of the mosque members, adding that her apartment faces away from the mosque.

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Mr Kozachik convened a meeting last month with representatives from the mosque, the apartment tower, the university and the police. He said he had also asked the city attorney to file civil nuisance charges against the apartment building’s owners if they failed to rein in the problem.

Mr Meiloud, the Islamic Center’s president, said that the mosque’s leadership had considered moving out of the area, but that the idea was soon pushed aside.

“We’ll resolve this,” Mr Meiloud said. “They won’t run us out of here.”

This article originally appeared on The New York Times, a partner of The Express Tribune.