Oregon Peace Institute Condemns Threats at Abu Bakar Islamic Center

PORTLAND, MARCH 28, 2026 – On the morning of March 25, 2026, a man entered the Abu Bakar Islamic Center in Northeast Portland during Fajr, the dawn prayer, and made explicit threats to worshippers before leaving the premises. Portland Police are investigating. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and CAIR Oregon are calling for a federal civil rights probe into the threats to worshippers at the Abu Bakar Mosque and for state and federal law enforcement authorities to investigate a possible bias motive for a shooting targeting the Islamic Community Center of Hillsboro just days before.

The Oregon Peace Institute condemns these acts without reservation.

Every person has the right to worship without fear of violence or intimidation. Threatening people in a place of prayer is an attack on one of the most fundamental freedoms we hold in common.

We want to be direct about the context. This incident did not occur in a vacuum. CAIR documented 8,683 anti-Muslim and anti-Arab complaints in 2025, a record high since the organization began tracking data in 1996. That included 33 documented attacks on Islamic institutions across the country. Within just six days of the start of the US war on Iran, the Center for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH) recorded over 25,000 dehumanizing and inciteful posts targeting Muslim Americans on X alone.

Local incidents like the one in Northeast Portland are fueled by the dangerous anti-Muslim rhetoric of elected federal officials. President Trump repeatedly called Muslim-majority communities such as Somali Americans “garbage.” Rep. Andy Ogles stated that “Muslims don’t belong in American society,” and Rep. Randy Fine has posted dehumanizing anti-Muslim material publicly. All of them act with impunity. 

One of our own board members worships at this mosque and was directly affected by this incident. We stand with them and the full community of the Abu Bakar Islamic Center. And we stand with Muslim communities across Oregon and the country who are carrying the weight of this climate daily. 

Our mission is to promote education and resources for peace and nonviolent conflict resolution. That mission requires us to name threats to peace clearly and to act in solidarity with those targeted. Peace is not the absence of conflict. It is the active work of building conditions where every person is safe.

We urge Oregon’s faith leaders to stand with their Muslim neighbors in person. We call on Oregon’s elected officials to oppose executive actions that discriminate against Muslim Americans and Muslim-majority communities. The diverse Health Equity Task Force worked for three years toward the passage of HB 4052, recognizing racism as a public health threat in Oregon, and those associated threats persist. We call on Governor Kotek to meet directly with leaders in the health and nonviolent security sectors to move from performative resolutions to safety and health interventions for victims and rehabilitation and corrective actions for perpetrators of these behaviors in keeping with this bill. We support CAIR Oregon’s call for a federal investigation into this incident.

To Oregon’s Muslim community: you belong here. Your faith belongs here. OPI stands with you.

The Oregon Peace Institute promotes peace and nonviolent conflict resolution across individual, community, national, global, and environmental contexts.