Police, FBI Investigating Threat To Decapitate Members Of Texas Mosque

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Police in Watauga, Texas were working with the FBI to investigate a voicemail message left at a local mosque by a man who identified as a veteran and threatened to decapitate attendees.

“F*** you, f*** Muhammad, f*** Islam. This is America. If you don’t like the way we do s***, get the f*** out,” the man said in the message left at the Masjid Al-Sahaabah, which was accessed by local TV station KDFW.

“We’ll start just cutting off the heads of all of you m*******rs,” the recording, which was left on July 30 but not heard by mosque officials until Saturday, continued. “Huh? How would you like that? Maybe we need another Christian crusade, which I think we do.”

“We will cut all your heads off, you understand me? All of you,” he warned.

The caller reportedly identified himself as an army veteran and a Christian in the recording.

Though mosque member Vincent Simon told KDFW that the institution routinely receives Islamophobic phone calls, he said the threats of physical violence were new.

Watauga Police Sergeant Jason Babcock confirmed to TPM on Monday that his department had launched an investigation into the call, but refrained from calling the recording a direct threat since no individual was mentioned by name.

“It is not necessarily clear at this point that we have a direct threat to any specific person,” Babcock told TPM. “But we are working with the FBI to see if we can figure out exactly is going on with that individual who called.”

Babcock said the Watauga police has partnered with the FBI because there “may be different federal statutes that would be able to cover” a general threat like the one in the recording “a bit better.”

The Dallas branch of the FBI did not immediately respond to TPM’s request for comment.

Babcock said he was unaware of any other threats made to this specific mosque and did not yet have a “timeline” of when the investigation would advance.

Other Dallas-Forth Worth area mosques have received ominous phone calls and hate mail over the past year.

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