An investigation is underway after graffiti with hateful language referencing Islam was found at the construction site of a mosque in New York – the latest in a rising wave of hate against Muslim Americans.
The words “f*** Islam” were found spray-painted on a banner at the construction site of the Islaamic Center of Mastic-Shirley mosque’s future home on Long Island earlier this month. The site, once completed, is expected to become the second-largest mosque on Long Island and will serve as a place of worship for more than 200 families.
Leaders of the mosque called the graffiti “absolutely disgusting and unacceptable” and said there is no place for Islamophobia, hate, or intimidation on Long Island.
“An attack on a mosque is not only an attack on Muslims; it is an attack on the values of every community that believes people should be able to worship without fear,” leaders said in a post on social media.
Assistant Imam Mehdad Islam told The Emancipator the Muslim community in Shirley feels “targeted” and “unsafe” after the incident. He said they won’t be deterred from building the site and will “respond to hate with love.”
“We are a community who are peaceful,” Islam said. “We are a community who loves our neighbors, our community, beyond just some Muslim community, so we hold no grudges. We have no animosity towards anyone.”
This is at least the second incident of anti-Muslim graffiti on Long Island in recent months. In April, several stop signs in the Deer Park neighborhood were spray-painted to read “Stop Islam.”
Afaf Nasher, executive director of the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said the latest vandalism is “an act of intimidation against an entire community.”
“Muslim New Yorkers should be able to establish houses of worship and gather for prayer without fear that their property will be targeted because of their faith,” Nasher said in a statement.
Local and state officials, including New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, have condemned the hateful vandalism. The Suffolk County Police Department Hate Crimes Unit also said it is investigating.
The vandalism is part of a rise in anti-Muslim and hate incidents across the country, civil rights and advocacy groups say.
CAIR says from May through July it documented 17 incidents targeting Muslim places of worship.
While not an overtly hateful action, different forms of religious tension are showing up in other ways. An interfaith group of parents who are Jewish, Hindu and Zoroastrian filed a federal lawsuit earlier this month against a California school district over a field trip to a mosque so students could learn about Islam.
And Republican officials have increasingly amplified anti-Muslim hate and conspiracy theories since 2025, according to the Center for the Study of Organized Hate.
Between February 2025 and March 2026, 46 Republican officials made 1,111 posts targeting Muslim Americans with bigotry and conspiracy theories, according to the center’s analysis.
Abdul El-Sayed, who earlier this month made history as the first Muslim candidate to net a major political party nomination for the U.S. Senate, was targeted by vitriolic rhetoric after winning the Democratic primary. Anti-Muslim hate toward him on social media “jumped twentyfold” after the primary, according to a separate report released last week by the Center for the Study of Organized Hate.
And since President Donald Trump returned to the White House for a second term, there have been 371 anti-Muslim hate crime incidents nationwide documented by the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program.
A report released by the FBI earlier this month says there was a 7% drop in hate crimes overall in 2025, dropping from 11,404 in 2024 to 10,606 in 2025. It did not break down which groups or religions were targeted, as it did in reports from previous years.
Underreporting incidents across federal agencies has also led to skepticism over the latest report among some civil rights groups who say the FBI’s data doesn’t provide a full picture of hate experienced within communities.
Trump and Israel’s war in Iran have also led to an increase in Islamophobia that has been rising since Israel’s war in Gaza, the Center for the Study of Organized Hate study found.
Trump has stoked anti-Muslim and hateful rhetoric, most recently saying in the Oval Office that there are “jihadists being elected all over the place.” He doubled down on this last week, posting a graphic on social media of El-Sayed as well as Reps. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota with the word “jihadists.”
The president’s rhetoric is “fueling the surge in complaints of anti-Muslim bigotry,” CAIR National Deputy Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell said. The organization in 2025 received more than 8,600 anti-Muslim bias complaints.
“Anti-Muslim hate is out of control in large part because of politicians who hate America’s diversity and cannot stand the sight of American Muslims engaging in the political process,” Mitchell said in a statement. “President Trump’s remarks were meant to demean and diminish the many contributions of American Muslims in public life, but they only embolden American Muslims to keep engaging in public service and speaking up for justice here and abroad.”
A White House spokesperson, responding to the criticism, told The Emancipator on Tuesday, “President Trump is right – the Democrat Party supports extremist far-left policies like massive tax hikes, defunding the police and prisons, and opening our borders to illegal criminals.”
