A mosque in west Wichita that was heavily damaged by fire on Oct 31 had received anti-Islam letters in recent months. Somebody also had begun turning on its outside water faucet overnight to hike its water bill, its leader said. Abdelkarim Jibril, president of the Islamic Association of Mid Kansas at 3406 W. Taft, said the letters put down Islam, called the prophet Muhammad a pig (sic), and enclosed drawings that mocked him.
The mosque received about eight of the letters starting four to six months ago, but they had stopped about a month ago, he said. Jibril said the mosque hadn’t turned the letters over to authorities before the fire. The FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives joined the fire investigation on Oct 31.
Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American/Islamic Relations in Washington, D.C., said he will be monitoring the investigation to see whether it is deemed to be a hate crime. “This is the kind of thing that happens all too often,” he said, “but it’s hard to predict.”