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The Council on American Islamic Relations Minnesota is asking the FBI to investigate an email sent Thursday that threatened violence against Muslim people.

CAIR-MN said the emailer used the subject line "Muslim sewer rats" in a message that threatened violence with "over 50 billion rounds of horrific, violent camel jockey piercing rounds of ammo." The same message was sent to CAIR offices in Southern California.

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It was the second time a threatening message was sent from that same email address, said CAIR-MN Executive Director Jaylani Hussein. The previous one was sent in December of last year with just one line that said "The Lord Jesus Christ rebuke you."

Minnesota's CAIR office is located inside a church building in the Seward neighborhood of Minneapolis and has about eight employees on any given day.

"When our staff received this email, we immediately were concerned about our safety and wellbeing of our staff," Hussein said. "We do not take these threats lightly knowing that there is a great deal of people out there who are misinformed and often may lash out and attack Muslims."

The email starts out with "hey there Muslim Pig Swine" and goes on to say that there are "millions upon millions of patriots, armed to the teeth with hundreds of millions of weapons." It says there is support now at the White house with a leader "standing for Judeo-Christian values."

"You have mistaken European white males patience for weakness," the sender whose name on the email is "Toobe i" ends the note with some profanity and "get ready to have a war."

CAIR is a national Muslim advocacy organization with chapters all over the country. It's not clear why the sender chose to send the note to the California and Minnesota offices. 

CAIR-MN says suspected hate crimes against Muslims have been on the rise. Last weekend, two men shouted derogatory remarks at three Muslim men and beat one of them in Fargo, N.D. Earlier this year, a 57-year-old man was sentenced to 12 months in prison for threatening to blow up the Tawfiq Islamic Center in Minneapolis in 2015. 

guilty of shooting and wounding two Somali-American men

 in Minneapolis who were on their way to prayers after playing basketball. 

It's not only concerning to receive this email after these other incidents took place, Hussein said, but it's also concerning because of the language the person used. 

"This idea of shooting Muslims with pigs blood or anything like that is a growing phenomenon within the anti-Muslim movement," he said.

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Riham Feshir

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A message sent Thursday to the Council on American Islamic Relations' Minnesota and Southern California offices threatened violence with "horrific, violent camel jockey piercing rounds of ammo."

MN Muslim group asks FBI to probe threatening email

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