O.C. Muslim Community Is Target of Threats, Abuse : Backlash: Calls are received as groups organize aid for bomb victims. Intensity of the reaction sparks fear.

It took mere hours for the first ugly reactions to the Oklahoma City bombing to strike Orange County’s Muslim community.

“Do you like being baby killers?”

“Did you guys do it?”

“An eye for an eye. Your building is next.”

Repercussions from the explosion, along with early speculation that the suspects were of Middle Eastern origin, have been measurable here on a Richter scale of hate: anonymous and threatening telephone calls to local Islamic groups the likes of which local Muslims said they have rarely witnessed.

The calls--made before the FBI issued arrest warrants for two white suspects--hit even as the targeted local groups were organizing relief efforts for the bombing victims.

The Islamic Society of Orange County received half a dozen venom-spewing calls by Thursday morning. One vowed, “There will be retaliation.” Gates were locked around the Islamic Society-run school in Garden Grove because parents feared their children might be in danger. A carwash planned for Sunday was canceled.

“I’m scared. I really am,” said Kathy Abdelmaksoud, mother of two children who attend the Crescent School. “Every time something happens, they go after the Muslims. How do we know they’re not going to come here? Yeah, I’m worried about my kids.”

Shabbir Mansuri, director of the Council on Islamic Education in Fountain Valley, said he arrived at the office Thursday to discover a message threatening to blow up his group’s building. It was the fourth disturbing call there since the bombing.

“This is the first time there is tremendous activity. Before, we’ve never had any (threats). This time people are really frustrated,” Mansuri said. He said he spent 35 minutes Wednesday trying to talk sense to a woman demanding that all non-Christians--especially Muslims--be deported.

“I did tell her, ‘I know you’re mad today. So am I. Nothing in the world can justify this horrible, horrible violence.’ ”

Leaders said the blast has set off a new round of stereotyping against American Muslims.

“For us it’s double sadness. Like all other Americans, we are sad about what happened,” said Dr. Muzammil H. Siddiqi, director of the Islamic Society, whose complex includes a mosque and the school. “It’s a great tragedy. On the other hand, we find stereotypes are created for no reason while things have not been investigated. We are being accused because of who we are.”

News of the terrorist bombing left many Arab Americans, long dogged by a negative stereotype linking them with acts of terrorism, dreading a renewed wave of suspicion and even outright hostility from their fellow Americans. Authorities have not identified any groups believed responsible for the attack, but have received calls from a number of people who said they were members of Muslim groups and claimed responsibility.

“I was praying that nothing about Arabs or Middle Eastern people (would come out),” said Mustafa Hassan, a restaurant cook in Orange who emigrated from Lebanon 20 years ago. “We don’t want a bad label any more than we have a bad label.”

A Palestinian American man from Westminster said he feared the bombing would regenerate the hostility that accompanied the Iran hostage situation in 1980, when vandals flattened his tires repeatedly in Anaheim. “We work so hard to improve our image in this country and something like this ruins it all,” said the man, a onetime activist in Palestinian causes who asked that his name not be used out of fear of retribution for the bombing.

Richard Hrair Dekmejian, a USC professor who has taught courses on terrorism and studied Islamic fundamentalism, said the backlash is nothing new.

“This is not the first time in American history when this has happened. Every time there is some type of violence in the U.S. immediately we tend to look at the Middle East and blame the Islamic extremists.”

Dekmejian said the American Islamic community pays the price for the unresolved Arab-Israeli conflict and tensions between Islamic radicalism and the United States. “They tend to be blamed unjustly as a result of both of those factors,” he said. “So they’re getting it from both sides.”

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Mansuri said the recent backlash has been quicker and angrier than what followed the 1993 New York World Trade Center bombing. The difference might be that so many children died in Wednesday’s attack, he said.

“I don’t feel this is hatred,” he said. “I see frustration. Something has happened in our home and we don’t have control over it. There’s fear of the unknown.”

The bitter calls arrived at the very moment when local Islamic activists were leading a blood drive and trying to gather donations for victims of the latest explosion. The Islamic Society called the bombing a “cowardly terrorist attack on innocent people” and announced it plans special prayers and fund raising for victims during religious services today.

“A criminal act such as this cannot be legitimized by any cause. We wish to express our condolences to the families of the victims and we pray for the speedy recovery of the injured,” Siddiqi said in a written statement.

Mansuri said he called the FBI and Fountain Valley police after receiving threats against the Council on Islamic Education, which shares grounds with three nursery schools. But he said the facility was staying open.

“We’re taking all the precautions,” he said. “But closing and going home is not going to help.”