Arab Americans braced themsleves today for more acts of harassment and possible violence amid mounting anger following Tuesday's terrorist attacks.
Reports of vandalism, threats and other kinds of bias incidents have increased as the federal investigation into the air attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon pointed toward a Middle Eastern connection and the group of militants led by Saudi-born exile Osama bin Laden.
Aware of the backlash, President Bush, who declared today a national day of prayer and remembrance for the thousands of people missing and feared dead after Tuesday's attack, has appealed for tolerance.
"(We) should not hold one who is a Muslim responsible for an act of terror", Mr Bush said yesterday.
But one Arab American, who spoke outside a mosque in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn early this morning and who asked not to be identified, said the president's words may be a case of too little, too late.
Racial slurs, including one with the slogan, "The only good Arab is a dead Arab" wrapped in pig skin, have been sent over the Internet to dozens of prominent members of Dearborn's Muslim community since Tuesday.
And highlighting mounting tensions, Arab American leaders met police and state security officials early this morning at Dearborn's Islamic Center of America to discuss security measures before midday prayer meetings at area mosques.
Friday is the holiest day of the week for Muslims.
Among the latest hate crimes against Arab Americans, authorities said a graphic message threatening acid attacks against Muslim women was found yesterday on an answering machine of the Masjid Mosque in Asbury Park, New Jersey, just across the Hudson River from New York.
In Dover, also in New Jersey, a window was broken at the Masjid Bilal Mosque, and a message left on the answering machine there said: "Close your church or I'll burn it down".
In Marlboro, New Jersey, meanwhile, a man was charged with harassment for driving through town in a truck emblazoned with the words, "Death to the Sand Niggers".
Muslims have strongly condemned the attacks in New York and Washington and stressed that several hundred Arab Americans are thought to have been working in the landmark twin towers of the World Trade Center before commandeered passenger jets tore into them.
"Too many Americans are channeling their understandable rage, a rage we all feel, against fellow citizens at a time when we should all be coming together to deal with this national nightmare", Mr Hussein Ibish, a spokesman for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, told CNN.