NEW YORK — A prominent national Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization has renewed its call for a strong response by public officials to growing anti-Muslim bigotry nationwide following another hate incident targeting an American mosque.

“Without a significant response by mainstream political leaders, this disturbing trend will only continue to grow.”

The New York chapter of the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-NY) reports that a man entered the Iman Mosque in Queens, N.Y., during a prayer service Wednesday night and shouted anti-Muslim slurs as he urinated on prayer rugs. The man, who was charged with criminal trespass, allegedly called the worshippers “terrorists.”

The day prior, CAIR reported that a mosque in California was vandalized recently with a brick and hate signs referring to the controversy over a planned Muslim community center in New York City.

CAIR said vandals targeting a Madera, Calif., Islamic center left signs stating “No Temple for the God of terrorism at Ground Zero. ANB,” “Wake up America, the Enemy is here. ANB” and “American Nationalist Brotherhood.”

Also Wednesday, CAIR called on religious and political leaders to repudiate growing Islamophobia following an attack on a New York taxi driver who was allegedly stabbed by a passenger who had asked him if he was Muslim.

Authorities say a New York City cab driver was recovering after being brutally stabbed by a passenger who first demanded, “Are you Muslim?”

The attacks occurred as New York is in the midst of the contentious debate over plans to build the Muslim community center and mosque a few blocks from the site of the former World Trade Center.

“I think this clearly demonstrates that hate speech often leads to hate crime when you have the constant vilification of Islam and Muslims on talk radio, in newspapers, on cable news and on the Internet,” Ibrahim Hooper, national communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told AOL News.

Police said Ahmed Sharif, 43, of the borough of Queens, was driving his taxi on Manhattan’s East Side Monday night when he was hailed by a pedestrian on the street.

Roughly one block from his destination, the passenger, identified as 21-year-old Michael Enright, of Brewster in upstate New York, allegedly asked Sharif, “Are you Muslim?” When Sharif said yes, Enright pulled out a knife and slashed Sharif in the neck, face and shoulders, police said.

Despite his injuries, Sharif was able to lock the attacker in the back of the cab and call for help. The suspect managed to get out of the vehicle, but police quickly located him and took him into custody.

Sharif was treated at a local hospital and released.

“I have been here more than 25 years,” he said, according to a statement released by the New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA). “I have been driving a taxi more than 15 years. All my four kids were born here. I [have] never [felt] this hopeless and insecure before.”

Sharif said he believed the debate over the Islamic center, often dubbed the Ground Zero Mosque, was making public sentiment “very serious.”

“All drivers should be more careful,” he said.

Meanwhile, Hooper said the Council on American-Islamic Relations is concerned about “hysterical anti-Muslim rhetoric” and the impact on American Muslims and their families.

“You can survive hate crimes … [but what about] the daily vilification of your faith — how do your children survive that?” he asked.

“Without a significant response by mainstream political leaders, this disturbing trend will only continue to grow,” said CAIR-NY Community Affairs Director Faiza N. Ali. “We ask that this incident be treated as a hate crime and that relevant charges be brought against the alleged perpetrator.”

Burn a Qur’an day

If building an Islamic center near Ground Zero amounts to the epitome of Muslim insensitivity, as critics of the project have claimed, what should the world make of Terry Jones, the evangelical pastor in Gainesville, Fl. who plans to memorialize the Sept. 11 attacks with a bonfire of Qur’ans?

Mr. Jones, 58, a former hotel manager with a red face and a white handlebar mustache, argues that as an American Christian he has a right to burn Islam’s sacred book because “it’s full of lies.” And in another era, he might have been easily ignored, as he was last year when he posted a sign at his church declaring “Islam is of the devil.”

But now the global spotlight has shifted. With the debate in New York putting religious tensions front and center, Mr. Jones has suddenly attracted thousands of fans and critics on Facebook, while around the world he is being presented as a symbol of American anti-Islamic sentiment.

Muslim leaders in several countries, including Egypt and Indonesia, have formally condemned him and his church, the Dove World Outreach Center.

Just as disturbing to Florida’s Muslims, and to many Christians and Jews, is that anti-Islamic rhetoric has begun to enter the mainstream through Republican political candidates.

Some of the opposition predated the controversy about the proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero. In March, for example, Allen West, a retired Army officer running for Congress in Broward County, told a group of supporters that “Islam is not a religion” but rather “a vicious enemy” that was “infiltrating” the United States. (A campaign spokesman said last week that Mr. West meant to refer to radical Islam, not Islam generally.)

Ron McNeil, a candidate for Congress in the Florida Panhandle, told a group of high school and middle school students last week that Islam’s plan “is to destroy our way of life.” He added: “It’s our place as Christians to stand up for the word of God and what the Bible says.”