FBI to probe harassment of Muslims

ST. LOUIS -- The Egyptian-born owner of a St. Louis area day-care center has been subjected to harassing phone calls and leaflets, and the center has been vandalized, prompting an FBI investigation into possible hate crimes, a Muslim official said.

"I have no idea why racists do the things they do," said James Hacking III, director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations office in St. Louis. "When it's a repeated, targeted kind of a thing, it really puts a little fear in you."

FBI spokesman Pete Krusing said the bureau had received information on the case and had begun an investigation. Krusing said he could not provide further details.

The day-care owner is an American citizen who recently opened the business in Weldon Spring. Her name was not released. Hacking said vandals have repeatedly placed dog feces near the front door of the center; damaged a fence surrounding a play area; and ignited fires on the front porch.

Meanwhile, leaflets left at the building have included racist messages. One, allegedly from a white supremacist group known as the National Alliance, included the message, "Go back to your (expletive) country."

Shaun Walker, a spokesman for the Hillsboro, W.Va.-based National Alliance, said the organization's members did not place the leaflets.

"Our fliers are designed to get white people to recruit white people to our organization, not to annoy non-white people," Walker said.

Hacking said the day-care center has also received hundreds of phone calls from someone who hangs up when the woman answers.

The center's owner told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch she had no idea why her business was targeted.

"I'm working with children -- peace, you know," she said.

The woman said several potential customers have decided against sending their children to her after learning she was from Egypt. Currently, the woman is watching only one 2-year-old child part-time.

Hacking doesn't believe the harassment is the result of anti-Muslim sentiment stemming from the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, but rather the work of "one or two misguided individuals."

There have been other incidents of harassment against St. Louis area Muslims in recent years. An Islamic school and center in St. Louis County received threats shortly after the terrorist attacks. Earlier this year, a Hindu temple in St. Louis County was vandalized, apparently because the vandals mistook it for a mosque. In Carbondale, Ill., about 90 miles southwest of St. Louis, vandals in March spray-painted anti-Muslim graffiti on a mosque.

Nationwide, Muslim officials have reported several assaults, including an arson attack on a Georgia mosque, a cross burning at a Maryland Islamic school, the kidnapping and beating of a Massachusetts pizza delivery man believed to be Muslim, and the stabbing of a Virginia woman called a "terrorist pig."