WASHINGTON: Muslims across the United States on Tuesday condemned the gun attack on a Texas exhibition centre, which was displaying anti-Islam cartoons.

As the US media highlighted Muslim roots of the two suspects who attacked the Garland Event Centre, near Dallas, Texas, on Sunday night, Islamic groups across the United States reminded other Americans that an overwhelming majority of Muslims did not condone such acts.

Azhar Azeez, president of the Islamic Society of North America, the country’s largest Muslim group, said it was simply a terrorist attack and there was no justification for it.

He noted that more than 100,000 Muslims live in the Dallas area, but “not one came to the Garland Event Centre and protested or participated in any type of protest.”

The fact that “they just ignored this entire incident that itself also shows that amongst the Muslim community there is a great amount of respect for freedom of speech”, he said.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the region’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organisation, said it condemned the attack “without reservation”.

In a statement issued in Washington, CAIR said: “We also reiterate our view that violence in response to anti-Islam programmes like the one in Garland is more insulting to our faith than any cartoon, however defamatory. Bigoted speech can never be an excuse for violence.”

Reports in the US media said that one of the two gunmen who attacked the exhibition centre, had a Pakistani father.

Nadir Soofi, 34, was born in Garland, Texas, to a Pakistani father and American mother. The other suspect, Elton Simpson, 31, is an African-American, who came from Illinois. Both lived in Phoenix, Arizona, and drove to the exhibition centre to allegedly attack it.

Although from Garland, Soofi shared an apartment in Phoenix with Simpson and ran a carpet cleaning business.

Usama Shami, the Imam of the Islamic Community Centre of Phoenix, where both Simpson and Soofi sometimes came to offer their Friday prayers, said Soofi was married to an American woman but later divorced her. He did not remarry and sometimes brought his four-year-old son to the mosque.

The imam described Soofi as “a very quiet person, who got busy with his business after 2010 and rarely attended the mosque”.

The imam said that when Soofi came to the mosque, he prayed quietly and left, “did not ask too many questions”.

Published in Dawn, May 6th, 2015

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