Anti-Muslim Hate Crimes Under President Trump 2017: Mosque's Door Handles Draped In Bacon; White Woman Sought

Davis, California, Police are offering a $1,000 reward for the arrest and conviction of a woman who shattered the windows of a mosque Sunday and placed strips bacon on its exterior door handles. The investigation is being treated as a hate crime as Muslims are prohibited from eating pork products.

Surveillance video from the mosque, also known as the Davis Islamic Center, reportedly shows a white woman draping strips of uncooked bacon onto the door handles around 3:50 a.m., local time, smashing six windows and slashing the tires of two bicycles.

Basim Elkarra, executive director of the Sacramento chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, called on the FBI to join the investigation. The group has launched an online campaign for donations for repairing the mosque. By Monday afternoon, $16,767 had been raised. Damages were estimated between $5,000 and $10,000, reports Sunday indicated.

“We ask state law enforcement authorities and the FBI to investigate the apparent bias motive for this vandalism and to bring the perpetrator to justice,” Elkarra said in a statement. “The swift apprehension and punishment of those responsible for this act of religious intimidation will send the message that the growing Islamophobia we are witnessing in our nation will not be tolerated or ignored.”

Davis is 15 miles west of Sacramento.

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Based on surveillance video, the suspect is described as a white female, with red and brown wavy hair, 25-35 years of age, 5-foot-4 to 5-foot-8, weighing 160 to 180 pounds, police said.

The Davis Islamic Center received a threatening letter in December, which was similar to others sent to mosques around the country. The letter, which was sent by a group that referred to itself as Americans for a Better Way and addressed to “the children of Satan,” referenced President Donald Trump’s election victory, saying, “There's a new sheriff in town" and the "day of reckoning has arrived" for Muslims.

The content of the letter was introduced with the sentence, "He [Trump] is going to do to you Muslims what Hitler did to the Jews."

Hate crimes against Muslims in the U.S. rose by 67 percent in 2015, the Southern Poverty Law Center reported on Nov. 14. Of the 867 incidents of hate crimes reported across the country after the Nov. 8 election, 6 percent were directed toward Muslims, according to another Southern Poverty Law Center report from Nov. 29.

Trump has called for the creation of Muslim registries throughout the U.S. He has also flirted with instituting a ban on all Muslims entering the country.