SEATTLE_Police believe someone set the fire that badly damaged a Bellevue mosque early Saturday, and arrested a man they found near the scene.
Police and firefighters responded to the Islamic Center of Eastside at 2:44 a.m. after a witness reported flames coming from the building. The fire destroyed the north side of the building. No one was inside.
Services at the mosque were suspended until further notice. Prayers on Saturday were relocated to the Highland Community Center.
"We want our Muslim brothers and sisters know we stand with them," said Bellevue Mayor John Stokes at an early evening City Hall news conference.
"We will not stand for this type of act," added Police Chief Steve Mylett. He said the police department does not consider the fire a terrorist act or a coordinated attack on houses of worship.
Police said they found a 37-year-old man in a parking lot near the building. He was arrested on investigation of second-degree arson, and police say they believe he is the sole suspect.
Earlier Saturday, Arsalan Bukhari, executive director of the Washington state chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, urged people to not jump to conclusions about the motive behind the suspected arson.
"We need to learn more," he said. "In most hate-crime cases, we have some indication if there's a bias motive. In this case, we don't have any indication."
Bellevue police and the FBI had briefed CAIR and mosque leaders on their early assessment of the fire, Bukhari said. He declined to share their views.
Varisha Khan, a senior at the University of Washington who grew up on the Eastside, had planned to attend midday services at the mosque on Saturday with her family.
"It was really my second home," she said. "I was crying for quite a while."
Khan was reluctant to speculate on the cause of the fire. Still, "this did not happen in a vacuum," she said. "This mosque itself, it's received threats. Hate speech does inspire attacks."
Earlier this week, a 36-year-old Auburn man who had allegedly threatened to kill members of the Islamic Center of Eastside was charged with malicious harassment, a hate crime.
Kamal Samater was arrested Jan. 6 in the mosque's parking lot, after telling the alleged victim he was "going to assassinate every one" at the mosque, and yelling "there is no place in America for Muslims."
Another Eastside mosque has recently been targeted by vandalism. In Redmond, the sign in front of the Muslim Association of Puget Sound was damaged last month, much as it had been weeks earlier.
Redmond police said they were notified the morning of Dec. 17 that the metal face of a granite slab in front of the mosque had been damaged overnight. At the time, police asked for the public's help in finding the person responsible. Police described looking for a tall, thin, young white male wearing dark clothing and a dark baseball cap.
Police added at the time they were not immediately divulging full details, but were investigating that incident and a similar one Nov. 21 at the mosque_the largest mosque in the Puget Sound region_as possible hate crimes.
In August, Redmond police received several anonymous calls threatening worshippers at that mosque.
Those calls followed a mass shooting at an Orlando, Fla., nightclub. The gunman in that attack killed 49 people and had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, law-enforcement officials said. He was killed by a SWAT team.
