Muslims and their places of worship “are clearly under attack,” says the president of one of the country’s largest mosques, which was heavily damaged four days ago in an arson fire.

“We’re actually reeling in disbelief,” Dr. Mahjabeen Islam, president of the Islamic Center of Toledo in Ohio, told Hatewatch today in describing the devastation caused by a fire deliberately set in the mosque’s prayer area on Sunday afternoon, just minutes after worshippers had left the building.

“This is a hate crime,” said Islam. The mosque she heads is the third largest in the United States, a 70,000-square foot landmark, visible for miles, with 3,000 members who will celebrate the center’s 32nd anniversary on Friday.

The fire and water damage from sprinklers touched every room in the Islamic Center, causing an estimated $1 million to $1.5 million in damages. Repairs will take an estimated six months.

A suspect in the arson, whose image was captured on surveillance cameras, was arrested Tuesday in neighboring Indiana. On Wednesday, Randy T. Linn, a 52-year-old truck driver from St. Joe, Ind., was charged in Perrysburg, Ohio, Municipal Court with two counts of aggravated arson, aggravated burglary, and carrying a concealed weapon, the Toledo Blade reported in today’s editions.

“It was a very symbolic fire, we believe, in that it was started in the center of the prayer area right under the dome,” Islam said.

In August, during Ramadan, an anonymous, threatening letter was sent to the mosque with the word “stopped” written in Arabic.

“Never in our wildest dreams did we believe something like this would happen to us,” Islam said. “We are clearly under attack. If our mosque had not been made of brick and concrete, it would have burned to the ground.”

The fire also damaged and shut down classrooms of the Islamic School of Greater Toledo, a K-5 elementary school at the center. Those children are now attending classes at a nearby community college.

The FBI is investigating the arson, and federal hate crime charges may be forthcoming, Hatewatch has learned.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization, says the arson is the latest in a notable spike in anti-Islamic hate crimes. CAIR released a report last month detailing the increase in attacks against Muslims and mosques.

During Ramadan, which started on July 20 and ended at sundown on Aug. 18, there was “one of the worst spikes of anti-Muslim incidents in over a decade,” the CAIR report says.

In the first seven months of this year, there were 10 incidents in which Muslim places of worship were targeted. During 13 days in August, Muslim places of worship were targeted eight more times, the CAIR report said.

“We do feel this is part of an overall trend of attacks on mosques and not an isolated incident,” Julia Shearson, CAIR’s director for Northern Ohio, told Hatewatch.

“We believe there a climate that’s been created in the political sphere and the far-right media blogosphere that gives a green light to extremists to act out and commit hate crimes against religious institutions and their members,” she said.

"I don’t think we’ve seen this kind of intolerance toward religious minorities since before the civil rights movement.”

The CAIR official said civic and political leaders should consider convening a national summit on religious intolerance. “For some reason, it’s really been allowed to fester,” she said.

The growing list of anti-Islamic crimes includes the unsolved arson fire of another mosque in Joplin, Mo., that burned to the ground on Aug. 6. In Illinois, shots were fired at a mosque in Morton Grove, and an acid bomb was thrown at an Islamic school in Lombard. In Oklahoma, vandals fired paint balls at a mosque. In California, pigs’ legs were thrown at a mosque. In Panama City, Fla., a firebomb damaged a Muslim family’s home.

Sometimes, it appears, hate crimes have been directed at victims the perpetrators may have mistakenly believed were Muslims, when in fact they were members of another religious faith.

On Aug. 5, six members of a Sikh temple in suburban Milwaukee were gunned down by neo-Nazi skinhead Wade Michael Page, who belonged to a racist white-power band.

Also during this year’s Ramadan, an Arab Christian church in Detroit was vandalized.

It’s been more than 50 years since Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously called Sunday morning at 11 “the most segregated hour of Christian America.” Although many congregations have since integrated – or at least no longer actively oppose the idea – some still haven’t gotten the message.

Just ask Charles and Te’Andrea Wilson of Jackson, Miss. They say a predominantly white church refused to marry them on Saturday because of their race.

The couple had sent out invitations and printed programs announcing that the ceremony would be held at First Baptist Church of Crystal Springs. But the church’s pastor, Rev. Stan Weatherford, called them on Friday to say that wouldn’t be possible.

“He had people in the sanctuary that were pitching a fit about us being a black couple,” Te’Andrea told the Jackson-area NBC affiliate. The Wilsons were not members of the congregation but had regularly attended services there.

Congregants threatened the pastor that if he married the couple “they would vote him out the church,” Charles Wilson said.

Weatherford decided it would be best for everyone if he performed the ceremony at a different church nearby in Crystal Springs, a small town of 5,000 residents a half-hour outside of Jackson.

“I didn’t want to have a controversy within the church and I didn’t want a controversy to affect the wedding of Charles and Te’Andrea,” Weatherford said.

Weatherford said he was surprised by the opposition voiced by what he termed a small minority of the congregation. No African-American had ever been married at the church, which was established in 1883, “so it was setting a new precedent and there are those who reacted to that,” he said.

Church officials now say they welcome any race into their congregation and will hold internal discussions on how to respond should this particular issue reoccur.

To Charles Wilson, the First Baptist Church’s behavior flies in the face of true Christian values. “I blame those members who knew and call themselves Christian and didn’t stand up,” he said.

His wife agreed. She was “brought up in the church to love and care for everybody,” regardless of race.

This isn’t the first time racial strife has struck Crystal Springs.

In 1966, Eddie James Stewart was reportedly the victim of a racially motivated killing while in the custody of the town’s police. They claimed he was shot during an escape attempt.

In 1999, Dan M. Gibson, then-mayor of Crystal Springs, spoke at a gathering of the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) during a failed run for the Republican gubernatorial nomination. The CCC, at the time seeking a “mainstream” image, is directly descended from the White Citizens Councils that bitterly resisted integration in the 1950s and 1960s.

Nor is the First Baptist Church the only Deep South congregation recently caught keeping Jim Crow on life support.

Earlier this month, a Winfield, Ala., church courted controversy by advertising an “Annual Pastors Conference” with “all white Christians invited.” Rev. William C. Collier defended his event’s racial exclusivity to the Birmingham-area TV station. “We don’t have the facilities to accommodate other people. We haven’t got any invitations to black, Muslim events. Of course we are not invited to Jewish events and stuff.”

“Of course,” indeed. Rev. Collier’s Church of God’s Chosen is affiliated with the racist, anti-Semitic Christian Identity movement, which claims Jews are “the devil’s spawn,” and whites the true biblical chosen people.