A New Jersey imam was gunned down outside his mosque before dawn on Wednesday, leaving authorities hunting for a shooter and saying they have found no evidence yet that an anti-Muslim bias played a part in the shooting. Imam Hassan Sharif was in his car when he was shot more than once at about 6 am near the Masjid-Muhammad Mosque in Newark, the state\u2019s largest city, Essex County Prosecutor Ted Stephens said at a news conference. He was taken to a nearby hospital but died in the afternoon.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know that in light of global events and with a rise in bias directed at many communities we are experiencing across our state \u2014 particularly the Muslim community \u2014 there are many in New Jersey right now who are feeling a heightened sense of fear or anxiety at the news of this slaying,\u201d Attorney General Matt Platkin said. Despite that, Platkin said law enforcement has stepped up outreach to houses of worship, particularly Jewish and Muslim ones, explicitly acknowledging the tensions unfolding in many parts of the world amid the fighting in Gaza since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel.<\/p>\n
Sharif had been a resident imam at the local mosque for five years, Newark Public Safety Director Fritz Frag\u00e9 said. He remembered the imam as a leader in the interfaith community who worked to keep the city safe. \u201cWe share your pain and we promise to utilise the full resources of those here and those who are continuing to partner with us to make sure that this heinous crime is solved,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The New Jersey chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation\u2019s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organisation, called Sharif a \u201cbeacon of leadership and excellence\u201d and said while the shooter\u2019s motives are unknown, the group is advising all mosques to \u201cremain cautious\u201d while keeping their doors open.<\/p>\n
About 320,000 of the state\u2019s roughly nine million (90 lakh) residents are Muslims, Platkin said. After Wednesday\u2019s shooting, officials reached out to Muslim communities in the city and across the state. \u201cWe are asking everybody in our community and our partners to let us know if there is anything that they want to be done and anything that is making them feel unsafe so we can respond,\u201d Frag\u00e9 said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A New Jersey imam was gunned down outside his mosque before dawn on Wednesday, leaving authorities hunting for a shooter\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":23822,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7158,1380,757,1607,7156,7157,1418,7159,7155,2603,7153,2959,7160,536,1748,329,7154],"class_list":["post-23819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-attorney-general-matt-platkin","tag-gaza","tag-guns","tag-hate-crime","tag-imam","tag-imam-hassan-sharif","tag-israel-hamas-war","tag-law-enforcement","tag-mosque","tag-muslim","tag-muslim-americans","tag-new-jersey","tag-newark-public-safety-director-fritz-frage","tag-palestine","tag-protests","tag-racism","tag-shot"],"reading_time":"2 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}