“My children won’t let me go out of my apartment,” said Mr. Hussain, 41, whose younger brother Muhammad Afzaal Hussain, 27, was fatally shot a week ago Monday a few blocks away. He was one of four Muslim men killed in the city recently – three in the past two weeks – and authorities believe the deaths are linked and intended to target the Muslim community. The latest victim, a 20-year-old South Asian Muslim man whose name has not been released by police, was killed shortly before midnight on Friday. Another man, Aftab Hussein, 41, was fatally shot on July 26. Authorities say the killings of all three may be connected to the November 2021 killing of Mohammad Ahmadi, 62, outside a business he and his brother ran. Muhammad Afzaal Hussain, left, with Muhammad Imtiaz Hussain, his elder brother. As Albuquerque police, the FBI and state police appealed to the public for help in finding the killer or killers — authorities on Sunday described a vehicle of interest, a dark-colored, four-door Volkswagen sedan — the attacks left Muslims in the horror. A member who attended the Islamic Center of New Mexico, the same mosque as the four victims, said he may never return, citing fear of becoming “bait.” Other members have temporarily left the state to stay with family members in other parts of the country to await the investigation. One man, who immigrated from Iraq, said he felt safer when he first came to the country in the 1980s. Another member, Salem Ansari, said some who go to the mosque and work night shifts have quit their jobs. their. “This situation is getting much worse,” Mr. Ansari said. Ahmad Assed, the mosque’s president, said he grew up in Albuquerque going to the Islamic Center, but never felt isolated as a Muslim in the city. But now, he said, the community is going through a “kind of managed panic.” The elder Mr. Hussain said he had lived safely in his neighborhood for eight years since moving to the United States with his wife and children. His brother Mohamed arrived in 2017, and both men would go to the library at midnight or buy coffee late into the night while attending the University of New Mexico as international students. “Now, I look out the window and think, ‘Oh, this is where my brother was killed. Shall we move?’ he said. Mr Hussain said he had originally hoped to send his brother’s body back to be buried with his family in Pakistan, but the multiple gunshot wounds had left his brother unrecognisable, and Mr Hussain did not want the family to see him of. The killer “wanted to finish him off – the whole nine yards,” he said. In general, hate crimes against Muslims in the United States are on a downward trend. Brian Levin, a criminal justice professor at California State University San Bernardino and director of the school’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, said the number of hate crimes reported against Muslims was lower in 2020 than any other year. from 9. /11, though he added that those numbers may be skewed due to pandemic restrictions. But it said hate crimes remained a concern: They rose more than 20 percent in 2021 and rose another 4.7 percent in the first half of 2022, the center said. Also, “underlying anti-Muslim attitudes” are pervasive and re-emerge in times of national hardship, according to Professor Levin’s studies. Authorities said they are refraining from using the term “hate” to label the crimes until a motive is determined. Just last year, the Islamic Center faced an arson attempt by a woman who police say set three fires in the mosque’s playground and one fire at the mosque’s main entrance. No one was injured, while the woman was arrested and charged with arson. The case is pending. The Islamic Center has instructed its nearly 2,500 members to stay home as much as possible, use the “buddy system” when they go out and avoid “engaging or agitating” anyone, Mr Assed said. He added that he still felt supported by other communities, but that this time he also felt a sense of “hopelessness and despair”. “I watch my back and get in the car. I watch my whole environment,” he said. “You don’t know if they’re following you from the mosque, if they’re actually watching people going in and out of the mosque and following them elsewhere. The pattern is unknown.” Some members of the community have expressed frustration at the lack of details from the police investigation, but Mr Assed said he had been in touch with the authorities and understood why they kept the developments under wraps. Authorities have not said why they believe the killings are connected or whether there were any witnesses. Mr Hussain said he wanted the federal and state governments to allocate as many resources as possible to catch the killer. But until someone is caught, nothing is likely to ease their fear – or their grief. “My 5-year-old keeps asking, ‘Hey, where’s my uncle?’ he said. “He’ll see me cry and say, ‘Are you crying?’ Why are you crying?’ But we can’t tell her. Not yet.”
