Jewish community leaders in Chicago are calling for local authorities to pursue hate crime charges against a 22-year-old Muslim man accused of shooting a Jewish man walking to a synagogue in West Rogers Park on Shabbos, an area known for its large Orthodox Jewish population. The suspect allegedly shouted “Allahu Akbar” while exchanging gunfire with police officers responding to the incident.
“We’re very disappointed,” Shlomo Soroka, Agudath Israel of Illinois’s director of government affairs, told the news site Jewish Insider. “I hope they add hate crime charges on later but regardless, even if there are technical reasons that they didn’t file hate crime charges, they have to understand what this really was — not even this specific incident — but what we have been saying for a long time, that the visibly Jewish community, which is the Orthodox community, is at grave risk. And it’s not just here in Chicago.”
Earlier, before the charges were announced, Soroka had said that the city was not doing enough to reassure an “anxious community.”
“Certain details around the incident are not being shared or reported with the public,” he said. “There’s a feeling that if this happened to a different community, it would be covered differently.”
Chicago’s 50th Ward Alderman, Debra Silverstein, also expressed disappointment in the decision not to address antisemitism as a motive, stating on Monday that she was “very disappointed by this turn of events.”
Silverstein went on to say that she “strongly encourage[s] the Cook County State’s Attorney Office to prosecute the offender to the full extent of the law,” noting that “additional charges – including hate crime charges – can still be added.”
Although the Chicago Police Department released a statement detailing the charges against the suspect, Sidi Mohamed Abdallahi, there was no mention of the 39-year-old victim’s Jewish identity, even though he was visibly dressed as an Orthodox Jew. According to Agudath Israel, this omission has raised concerns among Jewish leaders. The Chicago Tribune also did not identify the victim’s religious background.
The suspect allegedly shouted the Arabic phrase “Allahu Akbar” when he opened fire on responding police officers and paramedics, according to video footage obtained by a doorbell camera. Abdallahi now faces multiple felony charges, including six counts of attempted first-degree murder, seven counts of aggravated discharge of a firearm at police officers, and one count of aggravated battery by firearm discharge.
Over the weekend, Larry Snelling, the superintendent of the Chicago Police Department, spoke with several local Jewish leaders, a conversation recorded and later shared by Jewish Insider. Snelling conveyed that labeling the incident as a hate crime immediately could result in accusations of targeting the Muslim faith without sufficient proof.
“What we don’t want to do is raise fears on the other side,” Snelling said.
During a press conference on Saturday, Kevin Bruno, deputy chief of the Chicago Police Department detectives bureau, did not address the fact that the victim was Jewish until asked by a reporter. Bruno responded that “he was from the community.”
A spokeswoman for the Jewish United Fund of Chicago told JNS that “the police are asking for the community’s assistance with information or footage that could be helpful in their investigation.”
“Hate crimes are being investigated and will be added if determined,” she said. “The Chicago Police Department has assured the Jewish community that there is currently no threat to public safety.”
Karol Markowicz, a conservative writer and podcaster, wrote that “the gunman in the shooting of the Orthodox Jewish man in Chicago is an illegal immigrant from northwest Africa,” who “crossed our southern border a year and a half ago.”
“Chicago authorities described him as ‘African’ in a call with Jewish leaders yesterday when they pressed for an identity. Lots of questions for FBI and Chicago Police Department right now,” wrote Richard Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Goldberg added that the “FBI is involved in the investigation but everyone is staying silent. Chicago Police privately say they fear being accused of Islamophobia if they so much as confirm the case is merely being investigated as a hate crime.”
The current approach contrasts with the swift hate crime charges in an October incident where a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy was fatally stabbed in a nearby suburb.
