At least three mosques in California have received a letter warning that Muslims will be physically endangered now that Donald Trump has won the White House.
The Orange County Register reported Saturday that Islamic centers in Long Beach, Claremont and San Jose received photocopies of the same handwritten letter calling Muslims “vile,” “evil,” and “the children of Satan.” Signed “Americans for a Better Way,” the letter warns that with Trump’s election, a “day of reckoning has arrived” for American Muslims.
“He’s going to cleanse America and make it shine again,” it reads. “And he’s going to start with you Muslims. He’s going to do to you Muslims what Hitler did to the Jews.”
Long Beach Islamic Center chairman Tarek Mohamed told the Register that he planned to file a report with local police as well as the FBI.
“We’re going to report this to the authorities. No doubt,” he said. “This is not a local incident.”
The San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is calling for increased police protection at the mosques in response to the letters.
CAIR has documented over 100 anti-Muslim incidents since the November 8 presidential election. Several women have had their hijabs forcibly removed, and an Arab-American Uber driver was recently harassed by a fellow motorist who called him a “terrorist” and said he would be deported under Trump.
The President-elect proposed banning all Muslim immigrants from the U.S. during his campaign, and members of his transition team have pushed to reinstate a federal program that registered immigrants and visitors who enter the U.S. from countries with active extremist organizations. The program was abandoned in 2011 for failing to prevent a single terrorist attack and for disproportionately targeting immigrants from Muslim-majority nations.
