FBI says San Diego mosque shooters embraced extremist hate online

The FBI said the two teenage suspects in the San Diego mosque shooting were immersed in an online stew of hatred that reached across targets, from Islam and Jews to LGBTQ people, women, Black people and President Donald Trump. Special Agent in Charge Mark Remily said, “These subjects did not discriminate in who they hated.”

Investigators said the teens met online before the May 18 attack at the Islamic Center of San Diego in Clairemont, about 8 miles north of downtown San Diego, and that they later left behind a 75-page document now being examined by federal agents. The writings reportedly include anti-Islamic, antisemitic, anti-LGBTQ, misogynistic, racist and anti-MAGA material, along with Nazi imagery and references to accelerationism, a white supremacist ideology that calls for violence to hasten the creation of a white ethnostate.

Federal officials also said the suspects admired Brenton Tarrant, the man convicted in the 2019 Christchurch mosque massacres that killed 51 people in New Zealand. The FBI said it was devoting resources to analyzing the manifesto to understand what led to the attack and how to prevent a repeat. Investigators said the two teens later died of self-inflicted gunshot wounds.

The shooting took place on the first day of Dhul Hijjah, one of the holiest periods in the Islamic calendar, while children and staff were inside the mosque school. Three adult men were killed: Amin Abdullah, Mansour Kaziha and Nadir Awad. Abdullah, a security guard, was the first person to engage the suspects outside the mosque and exchanged gunfire with them, an act police and community members said likely prevented even more deaths.

Local Muslim leaders and civic advocates said the violence landed in a climate of rising Islamophobia and anti-Muslim sentiment. The Islamic Center of San Diego, described by the mosque as the largest in San Diego County, became the latest place of worship forced to confront how extremist grievance, amplified online, can turn into real-world bloodshed with terrifying speed.