The Ontario Fire Marshall’s Office is investigating, along with firefighters and the Peterborough Police Forensics Unit.
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The newspaper quoted KMRA president Kenzu Abdella as stating, “The police are treating it as a hate crime, as far as we know, but we don’t have any more details”. “Masjid Al-Salaam, the name of the mosque, means Mosque of Peace”, Bennett said.
Abdella said since the Kawartha Muslim Religious Association was founded in 1994, it has only been targeted by criminals once before.
It was unclear whether the fire was connected to the attacks in Paris that killed 132 people, police said Sunday. He would not elaborate on what discovery led investigators to believe it was arson.
“It’s not what we expected”, he said.
FundRazr.com Members of the Peterborough community started an online campaign to raise money to fix the mosque.
The mosque holds regular open houses that are attended by churchgoers and politicians.
The community does not know where they will go for their prayers, which they observe fives times each day. While the blaze was quickly contained and no one was injured, the Peterborough Examiner reports, the building, which suffered an estimate $80,000 of damage, is now unusable.
But he said the Peterborough community has been supportive in the hours since the fire, and for that, he’s immensely grateful.
“Offences such as this, committed in relation to a place of Worship are taken very seriously and the Police Service will make every attempt to determine who is responsible”, said a statement from Peterborough Police provided to BuzzFeed Canada.
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Note to readers: This is a corrected story.
