After California shooting, fears of Muslim harassment rise

A Sikh temple in California was vandalized by someone who mistook it for a mosque and left graffiti that included a profane reference to the Islamic State terror group.

Advocacy groups believe there has been a spike in anti-Muslim incidents across the United States in recent weeks that can be linked to last week's mass shooting in California and the inflammatory rhetoric of Donald Trump and other Republican presidential candidates.

Advocates say other GOP presidential candidates also have fueled anti-Islamic sentiment, including Ben Carson who suggested a Muslim should not be president and Rick Santorum who questioned whether the U.S. Constitution protected Islam.

After 9/11 there were hate crimes on the edges of society, but now it's in the mainstream with the leading Republican presidential candidate saying Muslims are not wanted in America.

—The imam of an Islamic center in St. Louis, Missouri, told a local television station that someone claiming to be a former Marine left a threatening voicemail message on the mosque's answering machine on Saturday.

Kolvani was arrested on an assault charge but the Queens District Attorney's office has not determined if he'll be charged with a hate crime.