A hateful message was spray-painted on a banner outside the construction site of a new mosque in Shirley sometime between Friday evening and Saturday morning, prompting a hate crimes investigation and a show of unity from local officials and religious leaders. The graffiti was discovered Saturday at the future home of the Islamic Center of Mastic-Shirley, which broke ground roughly two months earlier at 516 William Floyd Parkway.
According to ABC7 New York, the vandalism was reported through a 911 call shortly before 4 p.m., and Suffolk County police say it occurred sometime between 6 p.m. Friday and 11 a.m. Saturday. The Suffolk County Police Department's Hate Crimes Unit is now investigating, and officials and project participants have described the incident as a disturbing act of hatred. Community leaders gathered Monday to condemn the vandalism and pledge support for identifying those responsible.
Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine said religious intolerance and hate will not be accepted in Suffolk County, vowing that the county will pursue those responsible and hold them accountable. Police have asked anyone with information to contact Crime Stoppers at 1-800-220-TIPS.
A Two-Decade Journey to a Permanent Home
The Islamic Center of Mastic-Shirley has deep roots in the community. The congregation started with just 40 families in 2002, worshipping out of a converted house at 503 William Floyd Parkway, and has since grown to roughly 400 families, according to Newsday. That growth pushed the congregation to relocate across the street to a 1.6-acre site, where members are now building a 34,000-square-foot facility expected to become Long Island's second-largest mosque, trailing only the 45,000-square-foot Islamic Center of Melville.
The project, spearheaded in part by a younger generation of local leaders, draws worshippers from surrounding eastern Long Island communities including Ridge and Manorville, the outlet's report notes. Plans for the new center, first detailed in reporting from Greater Long Island, call for a two-story building with prayer halls, separate male and female libraries, classrooms, a food pantry, and an indoor basketball court sized for high-school play. Organizers have described the design as both a house of worship and a broader community hub.
Before breaking ground, the project cleared all required municipal reviews. The Town of Brookhaven Board and its Zoning Board of Appeals granted site plan approvals and zoning variances for the William Floyd Parkway and Tudor Road property across 2024 and 2025, according to Trihamlet News, confirming that places of worship are permitted uses in the area's A-1 Residential zoning. Staff reports cited in that coverage noted the site plan provided 124 parking spaces where town code required only 87.
Part of a Larger Pattern on Long Island
The vandalism lands amid a period of rapid Muslim population growth across the region. Long Island is now home to at least 100,000 Muslims and roughly 40 mosques as of 2026, up from just four in the mid-1980s, per Newsday's reporting, with growth driven largely by Muslim families moving out of New York City into suburban Suffolk and Nassau counties.
That expansion has coincided with a troubling rise in bias-motivated crime across the state. A report released in August 2024 by the Office of the New York State Comptroller found that reported hate crimes statewide surged 69% between 2019 and 2023, while anti-Muslim hate crimes specifically rose 106% over roughly the same period, from 2018 to 2023. Nearly half of all reported hate crimes in New York in 2023 were motivated by religious bias, the comptroller's office found.
The trend extends beyond New York. National anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bias complaints hit a record 8,658 in 2024, a 7.4% increase from the prior year, according to civil rights tracking data cited by Al Jazeera. Hate crime reports made up 7.5% of total complaints received nationally that year, the outlet reported.
Advocacy Group Condemns the Incident, Legal Path Remains Open
The New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations publicly condemned the vandalism, declaring that Islamophobia and hate have no place in New York, according to a statement shared by CAIR-NY. The organization regularly monitors anti-Muslim hate crimes and provides legal advocacy across the state.
Under New York Penal Law Article 485, the state's Hate Crimes Act, prosecutors can elevate a property damage or criminal mischief charge under Penal Law § 145.00 to a hate crime enhancement when a site is targeted based on religious bias, whether that bias is a whole or partial motive. No suspects have been publicly identified, and the investigation remains ongoing.
The Suffolk County Police Department's handling of the case follows years of federal scrutiny over how the department tracks and investigates bias crimes. The U.S. Department of Justice announced in May 2024 that Suffolk County Police had achieved sustained federal compliance with protocols for tracking, reporting, and investigating hate crimes, reforms that stemmed from earlier federal oversight agreements. For now, the congregation that has spent more than two decades building a permanent home in Shirley is left waiting for answers, even as construction on its new center continues.
