This year has seen several places of worship, including synagogues, mosques, and Sikh temples, have been targeted by neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other far right extremists with violent attacks globally. In some cases, authorities have been able to thwart the attacks, preventing “massacre[s] in the making.” In other cases, violent extremists injured or killed members of faith-based communities and law enforcement.
GPAHE identified plots and attacks in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Poland, though there could be more, which should serve as warning signs for escalating hate-based violence targeting places of worship. In the U.S., the Trump administration has ended or greatly restricted federal programs that protected religious institutions, while simultaneously stoking hatred against multiple communities by implementing harmful policies and using social media platforms to spread racist and bigoted propaganda. The administration also has in its ranks individuals who ascribe to far-right extremist views.
Below is a list of threats and attacks targeting places of worship globally, based on far-right and racially-motivated extremist beliefs. The list is likely not exhaustive and does not contain plots or attacks driven by personal grievances or non-ideological reasons.
United States
- In January 2026, the Union Trinity AME Church in Philadelphia, Penn., was vandalized with anti-Black racist graffiti.
- In March 2026, The U.S. Attorney’s office in Chicago charged a man with making a threat after the suspect made a post on X saying “I’m going to shoot up a synagogue.”
- In April 2026, two young people were arrested in an alleged plot to attack a synagogue in Houston, Texas. Their plan involved using a vehicle to drive through a congregation to “kill as many Jews as possible.”
- On April 23, 2026, the U.S.Attorney’s office for the Western District of Louisiana charged a 22-year-old soldier stationed at Fort Polk with transmitting a threat to “walk into a synagogue with my AK” and “kill every single Jew.” He made these threats on the gaming platform Discord, which is designed for text, video, and audio communications between gamers.
- In May 2026, the San Diego Islamic Center was attacked by two teenage neo-Nazis, who murdered three people. The perpetrators’ manifesto espoused neo-Nazi, anti-Muslim, and anti-immigrant beliefs.
Canada
- In February 2026, law enforcement investigated a threat made by phone against the Toronto Islamic Centre. The caller said “another Christchurch is going to happen to you,” referencing the Christchurch, N.Z., mosque mass shooting (51 people were murdered) inspired by the white supremacist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, which purports that white people are being intentionally replaced by Black and Brown immigrants. The caller also espoused Islamophobic and racist language.
- On August 21, 2026, two people were injured in a stabbing attack at a Sikh temple in Edmonton, Alberta. The perpetrator was found to believe in “new world conspiracies and government control.” In the same month, law enforcement confirmed they were investigating threatening calls against two Sikh gurdwaras in Calgary, Alberta, two hours south of Edmonton.
- On September 18, 2026, Durham Regional Police charged a 19-year-old with threats motivated by hate after posting messages threatening to carry out a shooting at a synagogue in the Durham region, Ontario.
- On September 20, 2026, a gunman opened fire at police outside an Ontario synagogue, critically injuring a police officer. The perpetrator, who was discharged from the Canadian Armed Forces in 2022 for refusing to be vaccinated, allegedly espoused antisemitic conspiracies about COVID-19. Law enforcement said police prevented a “massacre in the making” and confirmed the shooting was “a deliberate attack targeting the Jewish community.”
Poland
- On September 22, 2026, Poland’s security services charged a teenager with planning terrorist attacks on several targets, including a mosque. The charge alleges the perpetrator undertook preparations to “kill a large number of people through a terrorist attack.” The teenager was also charged with being part of a criminal group that aimed to “commit a terrorist offense, promote Nazi and fascist content, and incite hatred based on national, ethnic, racial and religious differences.” Among the teenager’s other charges were public incitement of hatred, promotion of a fascist and Nazi system of state, and possession of Nazi and fascist material with the intention to disseminate it through the internet. The suspect has pleaded not guilty to the charges. Two other teenagers associated with the suspect were detained and transferred to juvenile courts for being in possession of materials relating to Hitler’s Third Reich, Nazism, racism, antisemitism, terrorist attacks, mass killings, and lone-wolf gunmen.
United Kingdom:
- In April 2026, two people were arrested following an attempted arson on a synagogue in London. The attack is being treated as an antisemitic hate crime by law enforcement. The attack happened amidst a wave of antisemitic attacks in prior weeks.
- On July 15, 2026, police charged a 14-year-old boy with a terrorism offense linked to “extreme right-wing ideology” over an alleged plan to attack two mosques in London.
- On September 17, 2026, an Islamic community center in Cornwall was targeted in a “racially aggravated” attack, according to police. The perpetrator caused “substantial damage” to the entrance gates and poured an “unknown substance, possibly oil” on the building and within the grounds.
- On September 20, 2026, two men were arrested over a suspected antisemitic terrorist plot, described as “fairly imminent,” on Yom Kippur in the Manchester area.
The plethora of threats and attacks against places of worship in 2026 continues a disturbing trend of targeted violence against faith-based communities. The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) documented several attacks in recent years inspired by extremist beliefs. In November 2025, a teenager attacked a school mosque in Jakarta, Indonesia, with explosive devices, injuring more than 96 people. Writing on the perpetrator’s rifle referenced previous anti-Muslim mass shooters, neo-Nazi slogans and imagery, and Nazi esotericism. In September 2025, a shooter targeted the Annunciation Church and School during a morning mass on the first day of school, murdering two children and injuring 21 others. In February 2025, an 18-year-old student in Singapore was detained after making online posts aspiring to “conduct a Tarrant-style attack on Muslims at a mosque in Singapore using home-made guns, knives and Molotov cocktails,” according to Singapore’s Internal Security Department. In 2025, GLAAD, a non-profit LGBTQ+ advocacy organization, tracked over 150 anti-LGBTQ+ incidents targeting affirming faith-based communities since 2022 in the United States, including seven attempted arsons, three assaults, and two bomb threats. Faith communities also face violent threats and attacks motivated by other forms of extremism, such as in September 2026, when a “mass casualty attack” targeting synagogues in Pittsburgh, PA was thwarted by authorities. The would-be perpetrator was allegedly inspired by ISIS.
The Trump Administration’s Normalization of Bigotry Fans The Flames of Violence
Threats against religious communities are further exacerbated by the Trump Administration’s clearly racist online messaging and embrace of extremist and antisemitic ideologies, such as Christian nationalism. Christian nationalism is “a power-hungry political vision with a strict racial and gender hierarchy” bent towards establishing a Christian theocracy in the United States. Within this framework exists Christian Zionism, described by Political Research Associates (PRA) as “end times antisemitism,” which labels Jews as mere instruments to accelerate the end times, and Muslims as “satanic enemies” to be defeated.
DHS has spent the last two years posting a myriad of white supremacist and Christian nationalist content on social media, primarily X. Joel Webbon, a prominent Christian Nationalist influencer whose conference was attended by Doug Wilson, founder of the denomination that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth belongs to, called for “a Christian Nationalist Caesar” to protect America from what he calls “war Jews” and “gay Jews.” Kingsley Wilson, deputy press secretary for the Department of Defense (DOD), has a long history of antisemitism and promoting the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, which has inspired several terrorist attacks targeting synagogues worldwide.
Hatred targeting Muslim politicians from the Trump Administration and political figures surged in 2025, targeting Muslims as national security threats, terrorists, and aiming to undermine American sovereignty. “Remigration,” an ethnic cleansing proposal rooted in the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory which would forcibly deport all non-white people, is official Trump policy, as an Office of Remigration under the Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration is now open.
“Remigration” can trace its origins to the virulently anti-Muslim European Identitarian movement, which has connections to mass shooters who have targeted places of worship, like Brenton Tarrant, who murdered 51 people at two New Zealand mosques in 2019 (Tarrant donated to the Austrian chapter of Generation Identity). The Identitarians, whose organization Generation Identity (GI) targeted and advocated for terrorist attacks against mosques, used X, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok to market “remigration” as legitimate policy – which is now embraced by Trump. Former Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino, who oversaw Trump’s mass deportation operation from October 2025 to January 2027 spoke at an Identitarian “remigration” conference in May 2026, saying “80 million people voted for remigration. As we say in the U.S., mass deportations.” JD Vance recently made disparaging comments about immigrants making America “dirtier and poorer,”
On September 9, 2026, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) made a post on X (now deleted) targeting Sikh truck drivers. Online rhetoric targeting Sikhs skyrocketed by 66 percent in the days following, and on September 13, a Sikh truck driver was stabbed 17 times at a Wyoming rest stop. This attack comes as anti-South Asian and anti-Sikh rhetoric is being pushed by the far right and the Trump Administration as a part of their larger crusade against immigration. This is not a new phenomenon, as in May 2024, GPAHE found a 122 percent increase in slurs online directed at South Asians on 4chan, and a 261 percent increase on Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, between January 2023 and 2024. An analysis of FBI hate crime data from 2025 by the Sikh Coalition found that hate crimes against Sikhs saw an overall increase of 25% from the prior year.
