Watauga, Texas – Vincent Simon recalls feeling shocked when he flipped on the Masjid Al Sahaabah mosque’s voicemail to hear a death threat from a man promising to behead Muslim worshippers.

Simon, a US military veteran who converted to Islam some five years ago, said that the small mosque and its attendees are threatened regularly, receiving three or four intimidating voicemails a week.

At a time when rights groups and analysts warn of growing violence against Muslims and of intense Islamophobic rhetoric among mainstream politicians, the threat of beheadings raised serious concerns.

“This wasn’t the normal threat,” said Simon, who is on the mosque’s board and security committee.

“This is a long, angry message with a definite ‘I’m going to cut your heads off’ kind of thing’,” he told Al Jazeera.

“I don’t know if it’s the political atmosphere or just whatever else is going on; but some people think it’s okay to do whatever they want to do because there’s nothing that’s going to be done for us.”

Mujeeb Kazi, another member of the mosque’s board who moved from Pakistan to the US more than two decades ago, believes the anti-Muslim rhetoric of many politicians, and namely Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump, has given license to people to threaten or attack Muslims.”Even if he doesn’t win the presidency, well, I think he has probably already done the damage to the community that was cohesive, tolerant, accepting. That has [been] damaged,” Kazi told Al Jazeera.

On Monday, Trump announced plans to introduce severe immigration restrictions, including an ideological test for Muslims and tourists. He has previously called for a complete freeze on Muslims entering the country and supported registering American Muslims in a database.

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