A civil rights advocacy group has urged the federal Justice Department to investigate who is responsible for leaving pig feet at the site of a planned mosque in Ontario.

In a letter sent to the U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday, the Greater Los Angeles Area chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations urged the government to probe the incident as a hate crime.

Three pig legs were left at the future site of the Al-Nur Islamic Center.

Worshippers told CAIR-LA that the pig feet were thrown on the site’s driveways just before 10 p.m. Tuesday by two women who then drove off in a white pick-up truck. A security guard witnessed the incident and a report has been filed with the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department.

"We urge the DOJ to investigate possible federal charges for the perpetrators of this disturbing incident,” CAIR-LA Executive Director Hussam Ayloush said in a statement. "Only firm action by local, state and federal law enforcement authorities will send the message that bias-motivated attacks on Muslims, or Americans of any faith, will not be tolerated."

Press-Enterprise, 10 August 2012

See "CAIR asks DOJ to probe pig legs left at proposed Calif. mosque site", CAIR press release, 10 August 2012

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Muslims attending morning prayers Wednesday were confronted by two pigs' heads in the entrance to their mosque in a French town where an Islamist gunman killed two paratroopers in March.

The incident in Montauban was described as a "racist provocation" by a watchdog which monitors anti-Islamic actions in France and as an "odious and blasphemous act" by the Montauban mayor, Brigitte Bareges.

It was the first of its kind in the southern Tarn-et-Garonne region but officials refused to speculate on a possible link to the March tragedy.

The paratroopers killed in March were two of the seven victims of Mohamed Merah, who also shot dead three Jewish schoolchildren, a rabbi and another soldier in nearby Toulouse before being killed himself in a police siege of his apartment.

Hajii Mohamed, the imam at the mosque, told AFP the people who had left the pigs' heads had also spilled a large amount of blood on the floor of the entrance to the mosque, which is located in a town house that has been converted to a place of worship.

"It is contemptible," the imam told AFP. "To attack a religion like this, I don't know what is happening. People lose their heads, especially during Ramadan."

Abdallah Zekri, the chairman of France's Islamophobia Observatory, said Wednesday's outrage occurred against the background of an increase in anti-Muslim actions in the first half of 2012. "For this to occur during the holy month of Ramadan, it's unspeakable," he said. "It is racist provocation."

AFP, 1 August 2012

See also Le Monde, 1 August 2012

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