Is it any wonder that—during a presidential primary in which the GOP frontrunner launched his campaign with a platform of targeting immigrants and is now calling for U.S. mosques to "absolutely" be shut down—members of American mosques are finding feces at the entrances?
In a suburb of Austin, Texas, leaders of the Islamic Center of Pflugerville on Monday discovered feces and torn pages of the Quran that had been thrown at the door of the mosque.
Islamic advocates say they are used to seeing anti-Muslim actions in the wake of events like Paris, but they believe media-fueled anti-Muslim sentiment is causing an even bigger spike than usual.
"The picture is getting increasingly bleak," said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations. "There's been an accumulation of anti-Islamic rhetoric in our lives and that I think has triggered these overt acts of violence and vandalism."
In Connecticut, multiple shots were reportedly fired at Baitul Aman mosque in Meriden in the hours following the Paris attack. But while nearly every GOP governor is adopting a defensive crouch after Paris, Salaam Bhatti, a spokesman for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in New York, explains that mosque members see the gunfire as an opportunity to educate.
Bhatti said the shooting has not rattled mosque members. He said many are from Pakistan, where conditions for the Ahmadiyya movement are much worse.
"It's a teachable moment," Bhatti said. "As we do raise awareness of attacks in mosques, we will see mosques do not respond in violence. Islam teaches us to teach peace." [...]
Muslim leaders also have reported recent vandalism, threats and other hate crimes targeting mosques in Nebraska, Florida, Texas, Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee, Ohio, New York and other states.
This a disgrace. Donald Trump's campaign of hatred was a disgrace when it started, then most of his GOP colleagues tried to get a piece of the action, and now we are seeing the fruits of their labor.