White Supremacists Kill Three American Muslims in San Diego

Among them, a security guard named Amin Abdullah, a father of 8, whose courageous act saved the lives of dozens of children and hundreds of worshippers

This is a difficult piece to write.

On a quiet Monday afternoon in the Clairemont neighborhood of San Diego, two young men drove to a mosque with stolen weapons, anti-Islamic literature in their car, and hate scrawled on their firearms. They walked into the Islamic Center of San Diego and opened fire on men who had gathered to worship God.

Three American Muslims were murdered. Children inside the mosque were traumatized. And a security guard named Amin Abdullah gave his life so that others could live. This is not a news report. It is a reckoning. Let’s Address This.

Amin Abdullah, a father of 8, killed protecting children and staff in the San Diego mosque shooting (Source: AlJazeera)

What Happened

Just before noon, officers responded to reports of an active shooter at the Islamic Center of San Diego on Eckstrom Avenue. By the time they arrived, three Muslim men were already dead. Police entered the facility searching for the suspects, only to receive word that the two shooters had driven a short distance away and killed themselves in their car.

The suspects—later identified as 17-year-old Cain Clark and 18-year-old Caleb Velasquez—appeared to have planned this. Cain Clark’s mother alleges he took her firearms and car. She reported her weapons and her car stolen and contacted police—describing how her son had dressed in camouflage and left to meet with another person. Police were actively searching for the suspects when, at 11:43am, the call came in: mass shooting at the San Diego mosque.

It was too late for three men inside.

Before turning the weapons on themselves, the two also fired at a nearby landscaper, who miraculously survived.

Inside the car, investigators found anti-Islamic literature. On the firearms, anti-Islamic statements had been written. A suicide note left by Clark spoke of “racial pride.” San Diego police are treating this as a hate crime. It was also an act of terrorism—and we must not flinch from calling it that.

Amin Abdullah: The Man Who Saved Lives With His Own

Among the three murdered was a security guard named Amin Abdullah — a father of eight children.

In the hours before the attack, Amin Abdullah posted on social media about his desire to serve God to the best of his abilities. It would be his final post. Shortly after, he would do exactly what he had written—he served God by standing between the killers and the congregation. He gave his life so that others might live.

The Qur’an teaches that to save one life is to save all of humanity. Amin Abdullah saved countless lives today. He died as he had expressed his wish to live—in service to God and to the people in his care.

The Crime of Cain

Cain Clark is the shooter who killed Amin Abdullah. Cain Clark was white, and wore cornrows. This is what white supremacy always has been and always will be—a hollow ideology that despises Black people and Black culture while being unable to resist either. The contradiction is not incidental. It is the point. White supremacy has never been about genuine pride. It has always been about power—the desperate need to destroy what one secretly admires and cannot possess.

The Hate That Followed

In the hours after the shooting, as the community of the Islamic Center of San Diego mourned its dead and held its traumatized children, messages poured in from across the country. Not condolences. Celebration.

And this is but a snapshot of the thousands of hate messages I have personally received—and continue to receive. Imagine how many more the rest of the American Muslim community is receiving today? This hate is a direct reflection of a culture of dehumanization that has been allowed to grow, normalize, and fester in this country—fed by politicians, media figures, and online ecosystems that have decided Muslim lives are acceptable casualties in the war for attention and power.

I share this not for sympathy. I share it because we must be clear-eyed about what is happening. This is the world that dehumanization and hate produce. Not in theory. Not eventually. Now. In San Diego. In a mosque full of people who came to pray.

This is dangerous for everyone. When a government and its media apparatus decides that one group of people is less than human, history teaches us—with brutal consistency—that violence follows. The children traumatized in that mosque today are American children. Their grief is American grief. And the ideology that killed their community members is an American crisis.

The Hypocrisy We Cannot Ignore

In the hours after the attack, condolences arrived from politicians across the country. Some of them were sincere. Many of them were not.

Because many of the same politicians who expressed sorrow over Muslim lives lost in San Diego are the same ones who proudly use our tax dollars to fund Benjamin Netanyahu’s government as it bombs Palestinian, Lebanese, and Iranian civilians. As he bombs women, children, and worshippers in their own mosques, with impunity and with American weapons. We have screamed from the mountain tops that this is all connected. That injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. That this is a core teaching of Dr. King for a reason. The grief hypocritical politicians perform for Muslim Americans sits uneasily alongside the blank checks they write for the killing of Muslims abroad.

And then there is the apathy from the top. As of this writing, Donald Trump managed to offer only this: “It’s a terrible situation. I’ve been given some early updates, but we’re going to be going back and looking at it very strongly.”

Nothing about three murdered Americans. Nothing about a terrorist attack on a house of worship. Nothing about eight children who no longer have a father. The silence is not an oversight. It is a statement. Do you think we would have such silence if a Black or brown person attacked a church or synagogue? If an immigrant hurt someone? Trump would have leveraged such a hypothetical atrocity to bomb a 9th Black or brown country and round up another ten thousand immigrants of color.

Meanwhile his close ally and advisor, notorious bigot Laura Loomer responded by alleging it was a false flag event and calling on state violence to illegally raid the mosque.

Then she followed up by stating if it were real, to deport all Muslims.

Notwithstanding the unconstitutionality of her statement, or the fact that most Muslims in America are not from the Middle East—Loomer spewed her dehumanizing statement knowing full well the United States is funding a genocide in the Middle East. That it is simultaneously bombing Lebanon, Palestine, and Iran, at a minimum. Hers is not a call for “Muslim safety,” it is an open bloodlust to kill more Muslims.

Yet, Trump will not be asked to disavow her, denounce her hateful and violent rhetoric, and no one in corporate media will even attempt to demand accountability.

We must demand better. Not just in words. In policy. In leadership. In the moral consistency that says a person’s life—in San Diego or in Gaza, in a mosque or in a synagogue—is worth exactly as much as any other human life. Because it is. And until our leaders govern accordingly, the hate will continue to find fertile ground.

What We Owe the Dead

We owe the deceased victims more than condolences. We owe them a country that takes seriously the threat of white supremacist terrorism with the same urgency, the same resources, and the same political will that it applies to any violent crime. We owe their families truth, accountability, and justice. We owe their children a world that is safer than the one that took their fathers. Instead, we see a Trump regime that is attacking the Southern Poverty Law Center for their work on combatting white supremacy, gutting federal agencies combatting white supremacy, pardoning white supremacist insurrectionists, and openly praising Christian nationalism.

Thus, we owe ourselves the honesty to admit that this attack on the largest mosque in San Diego did not come from nowhere. It was cultivated. It was permitted. It was, in some corners, celebrated.

The crime of Cain is as old as humanity. But it is not inevitable. We choose, every day, whether to water the seeds of hate or to pull them out by the roots.

Today, we mourn. Tomorrow, we work.

Abdullah leaves behind eight children who will grow up knowing that their father was a hero. May Almighty Allah embrace him in His mercy. May his family be surrounded by love, support, and the community he gave everything to protect.

His name, Amin Abdullah, means Truthful Servant of God.

Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un. To God we belong, and to God we return.

May God grant Amin Abdullah and the other martyrs of San Diego the highest paradise. May He grant their families strength, peace, and justice. And may He grant this nation the wisdom to finally choose better.

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Qasim Rashid is a human rights attorney, author, and host of Let’s Address This — a platform dedicated to human rights and the accountability that corporate media refuses to provide. Subscribe below and join our movement for justice.