A2 · Elementary
10 min
religion and societyhate crimescultural heritagemuslim communities
The Mosque and the Community: The San Diego Attack
La mezquita y la comunidad: el ataque en San Diego
A shooting at one of San Diego's oldest mosques opens a conversation about what mosques mean as cultural institutions in America, and about the long history of violence against Muslim communities. Fletcher and Octavio talk about hatred, belonging, and the Arabic roots of the Spanish language.
Un tiroteo en la mezquita más antigua de San Diego abre una conversación sobre lo que significan las mezquitas como instituciones culturales en América, y sobre la larga historia de violencia contra comunidades musulmanas. Fletcher y Octavio hablan del odio, la pertenencia, y las raíces árabes del español.
5 essential A2-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| mezquita | mosque | La mezquita es un lugar importante para la comunidad. |
| comunidad | community | La comunidad está muy triste después del ataque. |
| luto | mourning | La familia está de luto. |
| oración | prayer | La gente va a la mezquita para la oración. |
| idioma | language | El español tiene muchas palabras de otros idiomas. |
Nobody builds a mosque in a foreign country because they feel safe.
They build it because they need somewhere to belong.
And yesterday, three people were killed at the Islamic Center of San Diego, one of the oldest Muslim community institutions on the West Coast.
Sí.
Yes.
Es una noticia muy triste.
It's very sad news.
Tres personas muertas.
Three people dead.
Both attackers are dead too.
And what we know right now is limited, but the location matters enormously.
The Islamic Center of San Diego isn't just a building.
It's been operating since the 1970s.
It's the kind of place that has buried generations, celebrated weddings, taught kids Arabic on Saturday mornings.
La mezquita es un centro.
The mosque is a center.
Es la comunidad.
It is the community.
Exactly that.
And I think people who've never been inside one sometimes picture a mosque as purely a religious space, like a church but different.
But the ones I've visited, in Jakarta, in Beirut, in Amman, they're civic spaces.
Libraries, meeting rooms, food pantries.
The whole community runs through them.
En España también.
In Spain too.
La mezquita es muy importante para la familia.
The mosque is very important for the family.
Spain has a Muslim population of around two million, mostly from Morocco.
That's actually something I wanted to get into with you, because Spain's relationship with Islam is ancient and complicated in a way that's completely different from the American experience.
Sí.
Yes.
El islam está en España desde el año 711.
Islam has been in Spain since the year 711.
Seven hundred and eleven.
The Umayyad conquest.
For nearly eight hundred years, large parts of the Iberian Peninsula were under Muslim rule.
That's not a footnote.
That's longer than the United States has existed, twice over.
Córdoba es muy importante.
Córdoba is very important.
La mezquita de Córdoba es muy famosa.
The mosque of Córdoba is very famous.
The Mezquita-Catedral.
I've been there once, years ago, doing a piece on the politics of religious heritage.
You walk into what is now technically a Catholic cathedral and the first thing that hits you is the forest of red and white striped arches.
It's one of the most extraordinary buildings I've ever seen.
Sí, es muy bonita.
Yes, it's very beautiful.
Pero el Centro Islámico de San Diego es diferente.
But the Islamic Center of San Diego is different.
Very different, right.
Córdoba is a World Heritage Site, a tourist destination, a symbol of what historians call convivencia, that period of relative coexistence between Muslims, Christians, and Jews in medieval Spain.
San Diego is a working community center where real people go every week.
La mezquita de San Diego es del año 1970, creo.
The San Diego mosque is from 1970, I think.
Es muy antigua para América.
It is very old for America.
It really is.
The Islamic Center of San Diego was founded in 1970 by students and academics, largely from the Middle East and South Asia who had come to study at UCSD and San Diego State.
It started as a living room gathering.
By the 1980s it had a proper building, a school, a library.
It became the institutional spine of Muslim life in Southern California.
Es la historia de muchas comunidades.
It's the story of many communities.
Primero, la gente trabaja.
First, people work.
Después, la gente construye.
Then, people build.
That's a really precise way to put it.
You see that pattern everywhere.
The Irish in Boston, the Italians in New York, the Vietnamese in Orange County, the Mexicans in East LA.
First you survive, then you build permanence.
A mosque, a church, a social club.
The building says: we're not leaving.
Y por eso el ataque es muy serio.
And that's why the attack is very serious.
Es un ataque a la comunidad.
It is an attack on the community.
Exactly.
And this isn't the first time this particular mosque has been in the crosshairs.
After 9/11, it was scrutinized heavily, partly because two of the hijackers had attended prayers there.
The FBI was involved.
There were investigations.
And the community there spent years being treated as suspects in their own home.
Eso es muy difícil.
That is very difficult.
La gente tiene miedo y también tiene vergüenza.
People are afraid and also ashamed.
Vergüenza.
And I want to be careful here, because what happened in 2001 was genuinely catastrophic and the investigation was legitimate.
But there's a documented pattern in the United States of entire Muslim communities being painted with the same brush.
Surveillance programs that targeted mosques not because of specific threats but because of religion.
That's a different thing.
En España, la historia es diferente.
In Spain, the history is different.
El islam es muy antiguo en España.
Islam is very old in Spain.
Right, and I want to dig into that, because I think Spain's history with Islam is actually one of the most misunderstood stories in Western Europe.
You grew up with that history all around you.
Does it feel present?
Or is it more like a museum exhibit?
No es un museo.
It's not a museum.
El árabe está en nuestro idioma.
Arabic is in our language.
En las palabras, cada día.
In the words, every day.
That stopped me for a second.
You're right, and it's remarkable when you actually start counting.
Something like four thousand Spanish words come from Arabic.
Aceite, almohada, azúcar, alcalde.
The mayor of your town has an Arabic title.
That's not nothing.
Sí.
Yes.
Y 'mezquita' también.
And 'mezquita' too.
Es una palabra árabe.
It is an Arabic word.
Mezquita.
The word we use for mosque in Spanish comes from Arabic.
We'll come back to that, because I want to understand exactly how that works.
But stay with me on the violence piece first, because I think there's a pattern here that people aren't seeing clearly.
De acuerdo.
Agreed.
¿Cuál es el problema en América?
What is the problem in America?
So the FBI tracks hate crimes by religion.
And in almost every year since 2001, anti-Muslim hate crimes are in the top three.
But here's the thing that doesn't get discussed enough: the peak years aren't 2001.
The peaks are 2015, 2016, 2019.
They track political rhetoric.
They track news cycles.
They track, frankly, which way the wind is blowing.
Las palabras son peligrosas.
Words are dangerous.
Las palabras de los políticos también.
The words of politicians too.
I spent a career watching that in other countries.
The moment political leaders start using language that dehumanizes a group, the violence statistics follow.
It's not a theory.
It's a documented causal chain across dozens of historical cases.
You see it in Rwanda, in the Balkans, in Myanmar.
You see it in quieter forms too.
En Europa también.
In Europe too.
Los musulmanes tienen muchos problemas en Francia.
Muslims have many problems in France.
France is a whole separate conversation, but yes.
The French model of laïcité, the strict separation of religion from public life, has created its own set of tensions with Muslim communities, particularly around things like the headscarf, halal food in schools.
It's a different flavor of the same underlying question: where does a religious community fit in a secular state?
En España, la gente come juntos.
In Spain, people eat together.
El marroquí, el español.
The Moroccan, the Spaniard.
En el mercado, por ejemplo.
In the market, for example.
The market as a place of coexistence.
That tracks with what I've seen in Lavapiés in Madrid, actually.
That neighborhood has one of the most diverse populations in Spain, and you feel it in the food stalls, the languages, the smells.
It's not without tension, but there's something functional happening there.
Sí, Lavapiés es así.
Yes, Lavapiés is like that.
Hay muchas culturas.
There are many cultures.
Y hay muchos problemas también.
And there are many problems too.
Honesty appreciated.
Because I think the temptation is to romanticize convivencia, to look at medieval Al-Andalus and say: see, it worked.
But historians will tell you it was never simply peaceful.
It was negotiated, contested, sometimes brutal.
The idealized version is a story we tell in hindsight.
Sí.
Yes.
Pero la idea es buena.
But the idea is good.
Las personas pueden vivir juntas.
People can live together.
The idea is worth fighting for.
And that, I think, is what makes yesterday's attack feel like something more than a crime.
It's an attack on that idea.
The Islamic Center of San Diego is, whatever its complicated history, a place where people built something together.
Three of them didn't make it home.
Es muy triste.
It's very sad.
La comunidad está de luto.
The community is in mourning.
Before we close, you said something earlier that I can't let go.
You said 'mezquita' is an Arabic word.
I assumed I knew where that came from, and I realize I actually don't.
Walk me through it.
Claro.
Of course.
En árabe, la palabra es 'masjid'.
In Arabic, the word is 'masjid'.
Masjid significa 'lugar de oración'.
Masjid means 'place of prayer'.
Masjid becomes mezquita.
So when Spanish speakers borrowed it, the sound changed completely.
That's a long game of telephone across eight centuries.
Sí.
Yes.
Y 'mosque' en inglés viene del mismo lugar.
And 'mosque' in English comes from the same place.
Primero árabe, después español, después inglés.
First Arabic, then Spanish, then English.
Wait, so the English word 'mosque' passed through Spanish?
The Arabic became mezquita in Spanish, and then English borrowed from the Spanish form?
I genuinely did not know that.
That's the kind of word history that makes you feel like languages are all just one long conversation.
Exacto.
Exactly.
El español tiene mucho árabe.
Spanish has a lot of Arabic.
El inglés también tiene un poco de árabe, pero no sabe.
English also has a little Arabic, but it doesn't know it.
English never knows where it's been.
That might be the most accurate description of the English language I've ever heard.
Octavio, as always, you've managed to make a grammar point feel like a foreign policy argument.
We'll be back next time.
Todo es política, Fletcher.
Everything is politics, Fletcher.
Hasta las palabras.
Even words.