Mosque helps church clean up after it was vandalized

After a Catholic church was vandalized last month, a nearby mosque donated thousands of dollars to help because it was “the least that they could do.”

Hamid Slimi, imam of the Sayeda Khadija Centre in Mississauga, Ont., paid a visit to a nearby St. Catherine of Siena Roman Catholic church after hearing about the incident through the media, The Toronto Star reports.

That’s where Father Camillo Lando showed him some of the footage of the attack that was caught on security video.

“It was a very bad scene,” Slimi told The Star. “The guy who did it ripped pages out of the Bible. He broke the altar. He threw the cross…”

“When I saw this, I thought it was pure injustice. It was just wrong.”

After seeing what had happened to the church in such explicit detail, Slimi informed his congregation about the incident and asked them to donate at a Friday sermon.

The congregation was able to raise almost $5,000 for the church in just one day.

“We believe there is no discrimination in charity. It is the act that is rewarded. It doesn’t matter who is the recipient,” said Slimi.

Video footage of the incident was disturbing, but the church was subject to yet another attack a few days later; the school attached to the church was sprayed with graffiti and a statue of Jesus was desecrated.

Police later arrested Iqbal Hessan, 22, and charged him with break and enter, committing an indictable offence and five counts of mischief over $5,000 dollars.

At the bail hearing, Hessan said that he was “upset with the Christian religion.”

His father told the court that his son had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, and after reviewing his mental health history, police decided that they were “not proceeding with a hate crime [prosecution]” since there was “no evidence of mal-intent.”

But despite all that has happened, Lando urges the congregation to “forgive and forget.”

“Our attitude is to pray for the one who did it,” he said.

When Slimi presented the church board with the cheque, he told them that his congregation was happy to lend a helping hand.

“I told them, this is what any Muslim would do.”

Lando called the gesture “beautiful and generous” and said it was an act of “confidence and understanding.”

“We are walking together in this community. We keep our faith, and we have to honour and respect people of other faiths.”