A man claiming to be an Army veteran reportedly left a threatening voicemail for a Texas mosque, religious leaders said.
According to WFAA-TV, worshippers at the Watauga Masjid Center in Watauga are feeling violated and threatened. Worshippers have said they have received hateful messages before, but this one felt different.
“This individual screamed several expletives on the phone,” Mujeeb Khalil, a member of the Watauga Masjid board of directors, told the station. “We feel threatened by these calls. And I don’t know what this brother is mad about.”
The station obtained a transcript of the message in which many expletives were used. More than a dozen profanities were used.
“It's just not American to behave like this. Not the America that I know,” Vincent Simon, another worshipper at the mosque told WFAA-TV.
Simon said he is a Muslim and a veteran and told the station that the person should go and sit down with mosque leaders and “talk to them about what they’re really about.”
Alia Salem of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said the hateful message is the kind of talk that adds “fuel to the fire.”
“There's a lot of people who are reading a lot of info online and unfortunately it adds to them becoming radicalized in their thinking towards Muslims,” she said. “And so they want to take some sort of action.”
The Muslim community said they’re relying on Watauga police and federal authorities in Dallas for protection.
The hottest stories ripped from the headlines, from crime to courts, legal and scandal.
