'It's a scar': Mosque in Mississauga looks to beef up security after attack

Members of a mosque in Mississauga, Ont., are still coming to grips with what happened after a man wielding an axe and bear spray attacked congregants during an early-morning prayer, a volunteer at the mosque who witnessed the incident said Sunday.

"We're all trying to shake it off," said Noorani Sairally, who was one of the roughly 20 men praying in a room at the Dar Al-Tawheed Islamic Centre when the attack unfolded on Saturday morning.

"It's a scar that is going to take a long time before it goes away. But at the same time, we're not going to let this deter us from coming to the mosque."

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When he heard screaming shortly after the prayer began, Sairally's mind automatically turned to other attacks on mosques: the 2017 shooting in Quebec City, and the ones in 2019 in Christchurch, New Zealand.

But when he turned around, he said, he saw a man with a can of bear spray in one hand and an axe in another, who started spraying the congregants that were assembled in two rows.

Sairally said a few men in one row got sprayed, while some in the other row reacted quickly to subdue the man. Others ran outside because the spray made it "unbearable to breathe," he added.

"There was one young congregant who immediately noticed the axe in [the man's] hand and immediately knocked it off to the ground. And then that's when everybody kind of jumped on him to wrestle him to the ground," Sairally recalled.

"It was a very frightening, scary moment."

Due to the remnants of the spray in the air, Sairally said the men dragged the attacker to another praying area and pinned him down until police arrived.

He alleged the man also had a bag containing "many" other weapons, including another axe, knives, other sharp objects and a bear spray canister.

Now, the mosque is turning its attention to security.

"We want to make sure that we have an internal security system put in place to make sure all the families that come in with the children and so forth feel safe and they can worship with peace and tranquillity," Sairally said.

In a phone interview, Ibrahim Hindy, imam at the Dar Al-Tawheed Islamic Centre who is currently in Saudi Arabia, called the men who subdued the attacker "incredibly courageous and heroic," saying he was thankful that nobody was seriously hurt — or worse.