What connects a mosque shooting in San Diego, California, to a Muslim community development in Plano? The answer is Islamophobia. While many mainstream news outlets have yet to call the May 18 shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego a hate crime, there is evidence that it is, including weapons covered in white supremacist symbols and phrases. Writings containing anti-Islamic sentiment were in the vehicle where the perpetrators, Caleb Vasquez and Cain Clark, were found. At a press conference following the shooting, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria faced scrutiny over his staunch pro-Israel and strict border-control stances contributing to anti-Muslim and anti-Arab sentiments.
This incident is part of a broader pattern of increasing violence against Muslims. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) received 8,683 civil rights complaints in 2025, the most in a single year since its first report in 1996, with Texas among the top five states for rising anti-Muslim complaints over the last three years. Even though the shooting happened in Southern California and the proposed development is in North Texas, Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism do not exist in a vacuum. They are intrinsically connected to broader demonization of immigrants and vilification of Islam, often including falsely accusing both of being “enemies of American values,” hence ostracizing immigrants and Muslims as the “other.” As a Muslim resident of North Texas and a scholar of Muslim and diaspora communities, I know this reality well.
