SAN DIEGO (BP) – God had to change Dan Bender’s heart when He called him to minister to Muslims more than a decade ago, Bender told Baptist Press after the murderous May 18th attack on the Islamic Center of San Diego (ICSD).
“I did not like Muslims. I didn’t want them in my country. And I was actually a missionary to Mexico, and God had to do a complete 180 in my heart and life,” said Bender, pastor to the refugee community for Meridian Baptist Church of El Cajon. “My wife (Debbie) and I stopped working in Mexico. We accepted the call. We moved. We joined Meridian Baptist Church under Pastor Rolland Slade, began to work and develop a center for welcoming refugees.”
Bender expressed heartbreak after two teenagers killed a security guard and two other adults at the ICSD, even as hundreds of students were inside the attached primary school.
“The fact that a couple of really messed up high school kids would arm themselves and dress in fatigues and make a plan to go out and murder innocent people at a mosque is deeply disturbing,” Bender told Baptist Press. “Like any unnecessary shooting or mass shooting or high school shooting, it’s just horrible. It’s horrible and it’s got to stop.”
Killed in the attack shortly before noon were ICSD bookstore employee Mansour Kaziha, community member Nader Awad and security guard Amin Abdullah, the local chapter of the Council on Islamic Relations (CAIR) announced Tuesday, crediting the three with saving the lives of the children and others. The suspected shooters, whom police identified as Cain Clark and Caleb Vazquez, 17 and 18 respectively, are also dead, reportedly of self-inflicted gunshots. Their bodies were found after the attack in a car on a road leading from the center.
Bender encourages Southern Baptists and other Christians to promote peace amid rising ethnic violence.
“We need to be vocal and speak out about any kind of violence or racism targeting churches or any of these things, but especially there seems to be more animosity towards Jewish people and Muslims,” Bender said. “So the Christian community and Southern Baptists need to reach out and love them. And we need to speak out against this kind of hatred and condemn it in the strongest rhetoric possible.”
When Bender spoke with Baptist Press, he had just received word of an Interfaith Community Vigil for the victims today (May 19) at 6:30 p.m. in a public park adjacent to the ICSD, organized by the center, CAIR and others.
“This kind of thing, it’s good to pray and get the community involved as quick as you can. And I’m sure that’s why Imam Taha (Hassane) called this meeting,” Bender said. “He wants to get out in front of the press and in front of all the fear and speculation and the what -if questions and all that.”
Bender expects hundreds to attend the vigil, including members of the Bridge Builders Network he and his wife work with.
“I do not want to call or even try to be more personal right now, because I think he’s just simply overwhelmed dealing with parents and students and the media and all of that,” Bender said of Hassane. “I’m going to let him have whatever privacy he can to take care of this and deal with this on his own and I will circle back around.”
Bender, who has taken high school students to educational events at the mosque, calls the imam peaceful.
“He is a man of peace, as are all the people that I work with,” Bender said, referencing the Afghan community in El Cajon, about 35 minutes from the ICSD. “They hate radical Islam about a hundred times more than the average American does. But a lot of Americans want to put them all in the same category. ‘Oh, you’re all potential terrorists.’ Nothing could be further from the truth. They are freedom-loving, peaceful, hard-working people who are thrilled to be in America.”
But Muslim civic participation carried heightened risk in 2025 not seen in the U.S. since the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center by Islamic terrorists, CAIR reported, with 8,683 complaints of anti-Muslim harassment that year.
“I’m a man of peace. I’m a follower of Jesus who taught peace and loving our enemies,” Bender said.
“I love Muslims. I do not like Islam. I do not like everything Islam does in the world, but my wife and I dearly love Muslim people.”
Bender encourages peaceful dialogue and loving outreach characteristic of Christ’s disciples.
“We need to reach out to them as our neighbors. We need to love our neighbors as ourselves. We need to embrace them with arms of Christian charity and support them any way we can,” Bender said. “Rhetoric has consequences. We need to start teaching our people to be people of peace and to turn down the rhetoric.”
The center has been the largest San Diego gathering place for Muslims since it opened nearly 40 years ago.
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