Hawzah News Agency (Edmonton - Canada) - police are investigating racist spray paint graffiti found on the Al Rashid Mosque as a hate crime.

The hate crimes and violent extremism unit is leading the investigation after being informed of the vandalism at the north-side mosque on Monday afternoon through images spread on social media, police spokeswoman Cheryl Voordenhout said in an email to Postmedia.

Al Rashid Mosque communications director Noor Al-Henedy said the vandalism actually took place early Saturday morning around 2:30 a.m., but the police reached out after seeing photos of the graffiti online.

“They wanted to make sure we did report it and this seems to be more of a political statement and act of racism than just vandalism so they want to throughly investigate it and take care of it,” Al-Henedy said.

Pillars on the mosque’s front steps were vandalized in purple spray paint with a star, the acronym “BHO” and the number “114.”

Al-Henedy said she doesn’t want to speculate what the graffiti stands for as there are several theories swirling around, but whatever it means insinuates hate toward the Muslim community who worship at the mosque.

“Vandalizing our religious property, there’s no benefit of that except to provoke or create a sense of fear in the community,” Al-Henedy said. “Our community is a very strong and resilient community. We try our best not to let things like this bother us.”

Surveillance footage from the mosque shows two hooded people approaching the mosque and spray painting the images before walking away.

This isn’t the first time the mosque has been struck by vandalism and Al-Henedy said again they intend to paint over the graffiti and move on.

This past April, the police hate crimes unit investigated a video of a man sitting in a vehicle outside the mosque and uttering racist remarks. This coincided with Ramadan, a month-long holy celebration that involves fasting from dawn to sunset. In January 2019, two men from an anti-Islamic group entered the mosque and confronted people arriving for prayers.

Al Rashid Mosque is Canada’s oldest mosque, built more than 80 years ago, and is the largest in Edmonton.