Anatomy Of The 'Islamophobic' Shooting That Wasn't

Authored by Andrew Bostom via RealClearInvestigations,

On Nov. 17, 2023, Mustafa Ramos, a Muslim man wearing a turban and a robe, was shot in the buttocks while selling Islamic paraphernalia adjacent to the Islamic Center of Rhode Island mosque in Providence.

The 52-year-old man was treated and released from the hospital in two hours. The incident, however, which happened just six weeks after Hamas' deadly Oct. 7 attack targeting Israeli citizen non-combatants of all ages, quickly became national and international news as the latest example of an "Islamophobic hate crime."

Following the lead of the initial report in the Providence Journal - which described Ramos as "a big, jovial man with a giant smile" - the Boston Globe, CNN, the U.K. Guardian and U.K. Daily Mail, among others, reported that the shooting was a hate crime while quoting people connected to the Center who felt that they and the larger Muslim community were the real targets.

As the influential albeit Hamas-linked Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) urged the Providence police to investigate the shooting's potential "bias motive," the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island and the Board of Rabbis of Rhode Island issued a joint statement on Nov. 20 denouncing "Islamophobia," while acknowledging that "a motive has not yet been made clear."

That uncertainty was reinforced on Nov. 27 when the Providence Journal reported that Maj. David Lapatin, commanding officer of the Providence Police Investigative Division, cautioned, "To say the mosque was targeted would be premature."

After that, coverage of the shooting all but ended - although the Rhode Island House featured the "Islamophobic shooting" in a resolution it passed in February 2024 condemning "Islamophobia." "It is believed," the resolution stated, "that Mr. Ramos was a target based solely on his faith."

Now, 32 months after the shooting, RealClearInvestigations can report exclusively that the Providence police have concluded that Ramos was not targeted because of his faith. In response to the latest set of queries posed to the police as part of RCI's 18-month-long review of the case, Maj. Lapatin stated in a July 20, 2026, text that while the criminal investigation of the shooting remains "open," and no arrests have been made, his department has determined that Ramos was not the victim of an "Islamophobic hate crime."

RCI's reporting also shows that even as the Islamic Center's "spiritual leader" in Providence, Imam Sackor, and the national organization CAIR, cast the incident as part of a growing trend of anti-Muslim bias both locally and nationally, sermons preached at the mosque repeatedly espoused hateful rhetoric that demeaned and even threatened non-Muslims.

The Shooting

The official Providence Police incident report on the shooting does not reveal how or when Dean Scott Ramos adopted the name Mustafa. It does report that the Maine resident made frequent trips to the Providence mosque where he would set up a table to sell Islamic merchandise. On Nov. 17, 2023, the mosque's surveillance video footage shows a masked man lurking nearby for about 20 minutes before firing four or five rounds at Ramos from a moving car that he was driving. One of the bullets struck Ramos in the buttocks.

Three days later, Ramos, who said he spent two hours in the hospital getting treated for superficial wounds, told a detective during a phone follow-up interview that "he was feeling better and confirmed that he had been shot one time." Ramos also insisted that "he still believed he was targeted due to his religion [Islam] and the [Muslim] clothing he was wearing."

Ramos amplified this claim in an appearance in a December 2023 appearance on the local Providence area "Club Ambition" podcast. Asked if the shooting was related to his faith, he responded, "Of course it is. You know, of course it is. I wouldn't think it would be anything else. … As a Muslim dressed as a Muslim looked like a Muslim. … In front of the masjid (mosque). You know, I mean what would make that, what would it make it different for me, than it would for anyone else? What would be that element?"

He also suggested a fact confirmed to RCI by the police that he was not cooperating fully with the official investigation. "I'll be honest with you," he told the podcast host, "I'm not really interested in their investigation. That's their job. I shouldn't have to tell them to do their job. That's what they get paid for."

Ramos did not tell the podcaster that he had a criminal record. Court records show that Dean Ramos served five years in prison in the early 2000s (commuted from a 20-year sentence) for illegal manufacture and distribution of schedule I/II controlled, potentially addictive substances (examples of schedule I include heroin and ecstasy; examples of schedule II include Fentanyl and OxyContin).

The Investigation

That record might be relevant as the police investigation has revealed that the lone suspect in the shooting has an extensive criminal record. Although no one has been charged in the case, that suspect appears to loom large in the police department's conclusion that Ramos' shooting was not a hate crime. Maj. Lapatin told RCI last week, "After extensive investigation, given the background and behaviors of the lone suspect, we made that logical determination."

According to the incident report, a search warrant was executed, and items "belonging to Nasir Dupont" were "photographed and seized." Although Dupont's religious affiliation is not known publicly, Nasir is a Muslim name derived from the Arabic word "nasir," which means "to help, to aid, to defend."

Public records do show that Dupont, who was born in 2003, is a recidivist criminal, with a history that includes illegal gun possession, robbery and drug-related crimes. He is currently in prison awaiting trial on drug and weapon charges.

The Providence police incident report and supplements indicate their investigation has been stalled by several limitations. These included the fact that the gunman was wearing a mask; their inability to find the getaway car; Dupont's apparent destruction of his text messages on his phone and phone archive; and Ramos's unwillingness to assist with the investigation.

Like Ramos, Dupont has not cooperated with the police investigation. Such lack of cooperation with law enforcement occurs frequently when there are crimes involving victims who have criminal records themselves. Accordingly, a mere 5-19% of non-fatal shootings in urban centers such as Chicago and Boston, for example, result in the perpetrators being arrested. Victim non-cooperation is common in those settings.

RCI's efforts to contact Dupont's family members to find out whether the two men had any previous connection were unsuccessful.

The Providence Police told RCI that it has not received any follow-up inquiries from the media outlets that initially reported the shooting since December 2023. RCI did not receive any responses to its requests for comment from local reporters who covered the incident.

Incendiary Rhetoric

Although news outlets repeated suggestions and claims from Ramos, the Islamic Center's leader Imam Sackor, and CAIR that the shooting was a hate crime directed at all Muslims, none reported on the incendiary rhetoric frequently preached at the mosque, including the weeks and months after the attack on Ramos.

While decrying legitimate hate crimes and acts of bias, experts who track such rhetoric argue that many Muslim leaders advance the idea that their community is under siege to divert attention from the inflammatory language, especially against Jews and Christians, espoused in mosques around the country. The goal, they said, is not just to protect their people but to cast scrutiny of their own words as "Islamophobia." Daniel Greenfield, an investigative journalist who has covered the phenomenon extensively, said the promotion of alleged "Islamophobic incidents" is "a diversion from genuine antisemitic Islamic religious incitement in U.S. mosques, and Muslim violence against American Jews."

The Providence mosque and CAIR did not respond to requests for comment.

RCI's analysis of sermons posted on Facebook that were delivered at the Providence mosque after the shooting attack preached jihadism and hatred toward non-Muslims, especially Jews, but also Christians. Examples include:

• On Dec. 22, 2023, three days before Christmas, it was preached that the Muslim Jesus ("Isa") will destroy Christianity, and in the same sermon, the imam invoked Qur'an (17:4-10 and 2:61/3:112) while accusing Jews of "genocide in Gaza," and reminding Muslims that Jews are "corrupters" to be "punished" and "prophet killers."
• On Jan. 12, 2024, the imam, noted Qur'an 1:7 (which pious Muslims repeat 17-times daily) means it is the Jews who have "incurred Allah's anger," and observed they are "cursed" (Qur'an 5:78), while again accusing "prophet killing" Jews - not the Israel Defense Forces, or Israel - of committing "genocide in Gaza," because of their inveterately evil Qur'anic nature.
• On Jan. 3, 2025, just two days after an armed Muslim man with an ISIS flag in his car killed 14 people and injured 57 others on Bourbon Street in New Orleans the mosque's Imam instructed his followers to treat non-Muslims harshly (citing Qur'an 48:29), and concluded with an Arabic supplication to "fight the disbelievers and polytheists," consistent with the jihad war proclamations of the 9th Quranic sura, or chapter (9:5, 9:29, 9:73, 9:111, etc.).
• On Friday, May 30, 2025, the Islamic Center's sermon, ostensibly about Islam's Hajj pilgrimage to Muslim-only Mecca, evolved into a celebration of jihad conquest, specifically, the "cleansing" of Mecca's pagans (in 630 C.E.), and not long afterward, the attack on Syria's and Iraq's Christians (634 C.E.), all given Islamic religious sanction from the Qur'an's 9th sura, a series of timeless war proclamations. Also in that triumphal vein, the mosque's imam quoted the Qur'an (verses 3:67 and 3:68) to teach that Judaism's patriarch was a Muslim:

"Ibrahim [Abraham] is not a Christian or a Jew. He is someone who worships only one God [Allah]. He is a Muslim." [Q 3:67]…And the people who have the greatest claim to Ibrahim are those who follow his and this Messenger [Muhammad], and those who believe [Muslims] and Allah is the protector of the believers" [Q 3:68]

The imam segued from that traditional Qur'anic supremacism into a derision of Christianity, and an ugly, contemporary blood libel against Jews, and Judaism:

"One group, the Christians, can't articulate what they really believe, what their tawhid (monotheism) means. And the other group (the Jews) has reduced their religion to an ethnic identity that they use to justify a slaughter of innocent people."

The Providence mosque's leaders did not respond to RCI's queries about whether these and other statements were hate speech. They have removed all the mosque's sermons since Oct. 7, 2023, from the center's Facebook page, and no longer live stream them on Facebook each Friday. Ibrahim Hooper, the National Communications Director for CAIR, which decried what it claimed was a surge of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab hate after the October 7 attack, declined to comment on the specific examples of the mosque's sermons provided above.

Local politicians, the police, and Jewish and Christian religious leaders did not respond to similar queries.

Providence Mosque Not An Outlier

The failure to report on or respond to the inflammatory sermons is notable because the Rhode Island mosque is not an outlier.

A landmark study whose results were published in two academic journals in 2011, "Sharia and Violence in American Mosques," evaluated the associations between Sharia-adherence, the presence of violence-sanctioning materials at a mosque, and the advocacy of jihadism by the mosque's leadership, in a nationally representative, random statistical sample of 100 U.S. mosques. Eighty-one percent of these representative U.S. mosques were deemed as moderately (30%) to highly (51%) supportive of promulgating jihad violence to impose Sharia. Additionally, only 4.7% of Muslim worshippers attended mosques where jihadist materials were not provided because Sharia-compliant mosques promoting jihad were the most heavily attended.

More recently, a painstaking investigation by the scholar Mansour Al-Hadj of "hundreds of Friday mosque sermons" across the U.S. following Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, jihad carnage targeting Israeli non-combatants found a similar message as the bloodshed was cast as an act of faith:

"…almost all the sermons amplify(ied) a single narrative which justifies Hamas's attack as a legitimate act that is based on the command of Allah and the teachings of the prophet Muhammad. Therefore, they did not condemn or hold Hamas responsible for killing and abducting civilians, including children and the elderly, and sexually assaulting women…for starting a war…using the Gazans as human shields, or causing the death of thousands of Palestinians…Instead, their sermons, focused on highlighting the similarities between Hamas' attack and the wars fought by the prophet and his companions, demonizing Israel, narrating historical antisemitic stories attributed to the prophet Muhammad and citing verses from the Qur'an that characterized Jews as corrupt, treacherous, untrustworthy, and the killers of prophets."

Researchers at MEMRI TV, which monitors broadcasts from the Arab and Muslim world, report that anti-Christian rhetoric is common at U.S. mosques. The anti-Christian sentiments preached at the Islamic Center of Rhode Island echo hateful Islamic themes about Christians sermonized across the U.S. since Oct. 7, 2023, including:

• On Dec. 8, 2023, Imam Hanif Fouse of Philadelphia maintained Christians were complicit with, and supportive of the Jews, "with whom Allah is angry (Qur'an 1:7) because they killed the prophets (Qur'an 2:61, 3:112). The Christians insult Allah because they claim he has a son," he emphasized.
• Prayers to Allah "to annihilate" the Christians were recited at the Northwest Indiana Islamic Center on Dec. 8, 2023, and June 21, 2024, at the Islamic Center of Lafayette, Louisiana.
• In Fort Lauderdale, FL, on April 19, 2024, an Islamic scholar intoned that while "the Jews orchestrated everything against the Muslims" throughout history, it was the Christians "who executed" those schemes.
• California Pakistani Islamic scholar Qazi Fazlullah, in a video posted on YouTube on Oct. 25, 2024, invoked Quran 5:51, repeating, "Oh believers, do not take the Jews and Christians as allies." He added: "Make them not protectors, or friends, secret keepers, depending on them, or trusting them," because (citing Qur'an 5:51) "they are the allies of one another." Imam Fazlullah concluded that befriending them "goes against Islam and Muslims," and is "not allowed."

FBI statistics show that hate crimes are committed against members of many religious groups, but there is no evidence that the United States is suffering an epidemic of Islamophobia. For the period July 15, 2021 to July 15, 2026, for example, the bureau recorded roughly 60,000 bias-related incidents, of which 1,163 were classified as anti-Muslim.

The Rhode Island mosque incident suggests a concerted effort by some Islamic organizations to portray their community as under siege and that many media outlets actively reinforce this narrative, while ignoring the often hateful speech routinely uttered in mosques across the country.

"This seems to be yet another incident that was hyped by officials and the media as 'Islamophobic' but turned out to just be a criminal act," Greenfield said. "False allegations of Islamophobia are not only politically damaging; they endanger the public and destroy trust in police departments" and among members of the communities in which the charges are made.