I knew Amin Abdullah, the hero of the San Diego mosque shooting

ESSAYIt doesn’t surprise me at all that he gave his life shielding others from gunfire. He was a true American Muslim.On the morning of May 18, as two teenage gunmen attempted to storm the Islamic Center of San Diego, one man stood between them and mayhem.Amin Abdullah, one of the three people who died from the attackers’ bullets, was a security guard at San Diego County’s largest mosque. The city’s police commissioner has since described him as a hero whose actions in trying to stop the gunmen likely saved many lives, including children.“It’s fair to say his actions were heroic,” San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl said at a news conference. “Undoubtedly, he saved lives today.”I’m not surprised. For I knew Amin – as a colleague, a man who wanted to protect others, and as someone who made me smile on one of the most difficult days of my life.Last December, with a thousand thoughts in my mind, I had walked up to the Islamic Center of San Diego to attend my father’s funeral prayers. My family migrated to the US from India in 1995. I was educated in the US, have worked here and am the father of an American-born daughter.By burying my father in this land that day, I was tying my past, present and future to the land where I have now spent the majority of my life.Being a Muslim, I have also had a front-row seat to the growth of Muslims in the US – socially, culturally, economically and politically. Equally, I have seen the rise of anti-Muslim rhetoric and violence in the US since the 1990s.It had been a few years since I had been to the Islamic Center of San Diego, the biggest mosque in San Diego County. I noticed that not much had changed in the building itself. A beautiful minaret and a dome, a modern take on traditional Islamic architecture, clearly visible from the freeway, announced the presence of the Muslims.