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Reuters – July 21, 2006
Main: Muslims told state is safe after mosque attack
By Sarah Mahoney
LEWISTON, Maine - Authorities reassured Muslims on Friday that Maine is safe after the state filed a civil-rights lawsuit against a man accused of rolling a frozen pig's head into a mosque during prayers.
Noel Bonem, director of the northeastern state's new office of multicultural affairs, said Maine was working with public safety officials to protect its 6,000 to 8,000 Muslims after the incident in Lewiston, the state's second-largest city.
The incident angered state politicians and local community leaders, who feared it would intimidate Lewiston's estimated 2,000 Muslims, many of them members of its burgeoning Somali community.
Bonem said a civil-rights lawsuit filed on Thursday by the state attorney-general against Brent Matthews, 33, sends a message to Maine's Muslims "that mosques will continue to be a safe haven, and that such acts will not be tolerated."
The suit, which calls the pig-head toss "a threat of violence," would require Matthews to stay away from the mosque, and its members, and could carry a fine of $5,000.
Islam forbids the eating of pork.
Published reports have quoted Matthews as telling police that he bowled the pig's head into the mosque on July 3 "as a joke," but James Howaniec, his lawyer, said Matthews has entered a not-guilty plea…..
Maine has the smallest percentage of non-white residents of any U.S. state; the U.S. Census bureau says 96.9 percent of its residents are white.
Lewiston's Somalis, who had come to the United States fleeing war in their chaotic African homeland, have been threatened before.
In 2003, after public remarks by the then-mayor about the growing Somali community, white supremacists converged on the city of 35,000 to stage a hate march against the "invasion" of the Somalis. The event generated international headlines.
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