Fire at Mosque Site Part of a 'Perfect Storm'?

(Aug. 30) -- As federal investigators search for the cause of an equipment fire at the future site of an Islamic center in Tennessee, a Muslim civil rights organization says the incident could be yet another instance of anti-Islam attacks.

"Unfortunately, a number of factors -- from the rise of the tea party movement to the rise of vocal anti-Muslim hate groups to the obvious decision by right-wing politicians to exploit Muslim-bashing as a political issue they feel gains them support -- have come together, I think, to make it a perfect storm of Islamophobia," Ibrahim Hooper, national communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told AOL News.

The fire broke out early Saturday morning at the future site of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, a Nashville suburb. A heavy hauler was destroyed in the blaze, and several other pieces of equipment were doused with a fire accelerant, investigators said.

"There were four vehicles there. One was severely damaged," said Glenn Anderson, special agent in charge of the Nashville office of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. "The others were just minor vandalism. They poured what we suspect was gasoline on the others. But it had not been lit yet."

Anderson said that while his agency considers the fire suspicious, investigators are not yet ready to declare it a case of arson.

"We are still in the preliminary stages of the investigation," Anderson told AOL News. "We have collected accelerant samples ... and we will be sending them off to the lab today [to] make a determination if it is, in fact, accelerant. Then we'll be in a better position to make sure we are on solid ground."

Completing the forensic testing on the evidence could take anywhere from a few days to several weeks, Anderson said.

The incident comes in the midst of heated protests against the planned Islamic center. Opponents have said that they fear the site will be used as a terrorist training ground, The Associated Press reported.

"They are not a religion," Bob Shelton, a 76-year-old retiree from the area, told the AP. "They are a political, militaristic group."

According to CBS News, Shelton and other demonstrators recently protested the proposed mosque. Many of the protesters wore "Vote for Jesus" T-shirts and carried signs that read "No Sharia law for USA!" -- a reference to Islamic law.

The fire also comes amid a heated debate over plans to build an Islamic community center and mosque a few blocks from the site of the former World Trade Center, something CAIR's Hooper says might have played a role in the suspected arson attack in Tennessee.

Also in New York, a Muslim cab driver was stabbed last week by a passenger who first asked, "Are you Muslim?" Authorities have charged a 21-year-old man with attempted murder in that case.

"I think the main motivation would come from the local controversy, but I think if indeed it is bias-motivated, that the Manhattan controversy would also be a factor and possibly push somebody over the edge that was already moving in that direction because of the local controversy," Hooper said.

Calls for comment by AOL News to the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro were not returned today. A statement on the organization's website decries the fire as an "atrocious act of terrorism."

Hooper is not yet ready to label the incident.

"We obviously couldn't refer to it that way unless it was determined officially to be bias-motivated," he said. But "if that is the official determination by law enforcement, I think you could make a strong case that when you have an act of violence targeting a religious minority for political reasons, that is the very definition of terrorism."

CAIR is asking federal officials to conduct a hate-crime investigation. Anderson says it is still too soon to move in that direction.

"There's no indication that it's anything more than people, probably, with different views," Anderson said. "I've heard people trying to put the hate-crime moniker on it. At this point in the investigation, that is not something that we're calling it.

"It's a routine [arson investigation] in our eyes, so we're just following up on leads and asking the public for help, [and] we'll continue to run the investigation that way," he said.

Meanwhile, deputies with the Rutherford County Sheriff's Office have launched an investigation into reports of gunfire Sunday afternoon near the Islamic center site, The Daily News Journal reported.

According to the newspaper, a group of congregation members were at the site inspecting the damage from the fire when they heard what they thought was nine shots, fired from at least two directions.

It is unclear whether the incident is connected to the fire. Calls to the Sheriff's Department by AOL News were not immediately returned.