This article examines the recent attack on a mosque in San Diego, carried out by two teenagers who subsequently took their own lives. San Diego, located on the Pacific Coast of Southern California near the US–Mexico border, is the eighth most populous city in the US and the second largest in California, with a population exceeding 1.4 million residents.

California is home to a significant Asian American population, accounting for approximately 31% of the total Asian American population in the US, which stands at around 18 million. This translates to roughly 5.6 million Asian Americans residing in the state. Among them, Filipinos constitute the largest ethnic group, numbering approximately 1.4 million, followed by Chinese Americans at around 650,000. Individuals of Indian origin are estimated at 505,000, while the Pakistani American population is approximately 54,000. Notably, nearly a quarter of this Asian American population identifies as Muslim, amounting to roughly 1.4 million individuals. Given its size and visibility, this community remains vulnerable to targeting by anti-Muslim groups.

The car that the two teenagers were riding in carried a lot of hate material against the growing Muslim population in the US. Two journalists, Sheila Dewan and Jill Cowan, wrote a detailed story about the rise of what they call "Islamophobia in the United States and Western Europe". Commenting on the San Diego Mosque attack they wrote: "To some, the killings seemed like an inevitable result of a swell of Islamophobia in the United States and around the globe. Anti-Muslim rhetoric on........

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