Mosque's Neighbor Puts Up This Sign

Michael Heick isn’t feeling particularly neighborly about the Jaffarya Islamic Center that sits next door to his house in the suburbs of Buffalo. He’s posted a sign in his lawn reading, “Bomb Making, Next Driveway.” Needless to say, Muslims are not pleased. “I would think it’s an incitement to hatred against Muslims,” one member of the mosque’s board of trustees tells the Buffalo News. “Tomorrow, somebody could say, ‘Oh, they have weapons,’ and people would believe it.”

Heick complains that the mosque’s lights encroach on his yard. “The place is too close. I don’t care what people think. It doesn’t matter what people think,” Heick says. “This is a way to get answers now. I get none from the town. The intent is to catch the eye of the people who I have a problem with.” Whoever that might be. Heick says the sign isn’t directed against anyone in particular: “It does not say what driveway.” (More Islamophobia stories.)