By Scott Taylor staylor@sunjournal.com,Staff Writer

LEWISTON – The scratched glass on the windows of Harun Sheekhey’s Lisbon Street restaurant makes it perfectly clear to him.

It’s intimidation, aimed at local Somali Muslims.

“I feel like we’re targets,” said Sheekhey, owner of Cleopatra’s.

The scratches appeared on his window overnight on Tuesday, a day after a man rolled a pig’s head through the open door at the Lewiston-Auburn Islamic Mosque. The mosque is a few blocks north of Sheekhey’s restaurant on Lisbon Street.

Police arrested Brent Matthews, 33, of Lewiston, on a charge of desecrating a church, a misdemeanor, after the frozen pig’s head was rolled into the mosque Monday during evening prayers.

Pigs are considered unclean animals by Muslims.

The pig’s head story has drawn international attention, said Imam Iman Nuh, the leader of the mosque. He said Wednesday he had received several phone calls from people as far away as England asking what happened.

The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, which learned of the incident, has also joined in condemning it. The council notified the FBI and U.S. Justice Department of the possible hate crime, said its spokesman, Ibrahim Hooper.

“All Americans should be able to offer prayers in their houses of worship without fear of attack or intimidation,” Hooper said Wednesday.

Nuh refused to condemn Matthews, although the imam was puzzled about why someone could defile a mosque.

“How could anyone think that was good?” Nuh said.

He said local Muslims are leaving the investigation up to the police.

“It was offensive, whether he acted alone or not,” Nuh said. “But Muslims are a tolerant people, and we’re not getting angry. Most of the people in Lewiston and Auburn have been very good, very friendly to us. Most are good people, and we know that.”

The council’s Hooper said education and outreach are important when it comes to non-Muslims because anti-Islam prejudice decreases when people get to know ordinary Muslims.

“We urge Muslims in Maine to increase their outreach efforts to educate people of other faiths about Islam,” Hooper said.

The incident also has made local Somalis sensitive to other potential threats.

People are worried, Ahmed Hirie of Auburn said Wednesday.

“Most people in Lewiston are fine, friendly people, but there are some that cause many worries,” Hirie said. “It seems like it’s happening more often over the last three months. It seems like there is more and more and more.”

That’s why Sheekhey is looking suspiciously at the scratches in the glass of his restaurant, even though it’s not the first time it has happened. He thinks a former employee scratched some insults on his door last week.

But the newest scratches – on every window of the restaurant, from the alley to Lisbon Street – were done by someone else. They are longer, deeper cuts in the glass than the message carved by the disgruntled employee.

“This is something very different and I don’t think a Somali did it,” Sheekhey said. “And they didn’t do it to other windows up or down Lisbon Street. It was just my windows, so I feel targeted.”

Police Chief William Welch said police would investigate the vandalism, but stopped short of blaming it on racism. More likely, it was a run-of-the-mill, random act, Welch said.

“There were a lot of people out walking up and down this street on July 4,” Welch said. “I’d like to think that it was random, that it’s not related in any way.”

Welch and Deputy Chief Michael Bussiere met with mosque representatives Wednesday to discuss the desecration. He stopped to talk to Sheekhey as well, and urged him and other Somalis to report any intimidation, insults or threats to police.

“We feel that these are isolated, but we need to know everything,” Welch said. “We can’t help it if something happens but we don’t know about it. And if they do let us know, we take things very seriously.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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