CYPRESS, California: A Southern California mosque was vandalized with graffiti including expletives and threats on Thursday, shortly after President Barack Obama’s address in Egypt to the Muslim world.
A police officer on patrol at 4 a.m. spotted the hate messages painted on the front wall of the Islamic Center of Cypress, said Sgt. Tom Bruce. The paint was still wet, he said.
Rusty Kennedy, executive director of the Orange County Human Relations Commission, said the graffiti was about more than 1 meter tall and spread over up to 10 meters of the wall.
In an e-mail to Muslim-American community leaders, Kennedy reported that the graffiti read in part: “We will kill you all” and “US military is going to kill you all.” Police said there were no witnesses and the incident was not caught on surveillance video.
The graffiti was quickly removed or covered over. By afternoon, a patch of fresh white paint covered a large area on the single-story, stucco building, which faces a Korean Lutheran church and strip mall on a busy residential street.
A handful of men gathered in the mosque’s office and several prayed quietly.
Kennedy said it was likely the graffiti was prompted by Obama’s outreach to the Middle East. The vandalism occurred about an hour after Obama’s speech at Cairo University in Egypt aired live on the West Coast.
