"There's a culture of violence toward Muslims that is not brewing, but that is already here'

Abdel Halim, who works with the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago, said he forwarded some of the more menacing messages to law enforcement and found himself seething over the dark perception that many Americans have about his religion.

"There were Facebook pages saying (the killer) is a hero, kill all Muslims and that we're going to continue his work," Abdel Halim said. "There's a culture of violence toward Muslims that is not brewing, but that is already here."

The victims — Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, his wife, Yusor Mohammad, 21, and her 19-year-old sister, Razan Abu-Salha — were buried Thursday. Muslim Americans throughout the country continue to express anger and demand that the tragedy mark a turning point in the uneasy national conversation about Islam.

Authorities charged Craig Stephen Hicks, an avowed atheist who was harshly critical of people of faith in social media postings, with the killings. Police, however, say the preliminary investigation suggests the crime was triggered by an ongoing dispute over parking at their condominium complex near the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. The FBI announced Thursday it had opened a parallel inquiry to determine whether religious bias motivated Hicks.

The suggestion that the killings weren't necessarily motivated by religious hate has led to widespread outrage from family and colleagues of the victims as well as the broader Muslim community. In the wave of mourning and anger on social media, the hashtag #MuslimLivesMatter has emerged. And in mosques and community centers, a simple question is leading many conversations: How can this not be considered a hate crime?

"If it, for example, was a Muslim man who executed three Christians, white American students who were young and beautiful and had just gotten married," said Steve Sosebee, who heads the Palestine Children's Relief Fund, an aid organization that Barakat volunteered with in 2012, "what would the reaction be?"

The killings come after Islamist terrorists killed 17 people in France last month, and as President Obama this week formally sought congressional approval for authorization to use military force to fight the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

The dim view of Islam has been perpetuated by the rise of al-Qaeda and more recently with the ascendance of the Islamic State, the terror group that has seized dozens of Western hostages, beheaded aid workers and journalists, and taken control of large swaths of Iraq and Syria.

Concerns about the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, has grown as national security officials have identified dozens of radicalized American Muslims who traveled to Syria to fight with the group. National Counterterrorism Center Director Nicholas Rasmussen testified before Congress last week that the rate of foreign fighter travel to Syria is unprecedented.

"It exceeds the rate of travelers who went to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen or Somalia or other prominent conflict zones ... at any point in the last 20 years," Rasmussen told the House Homeland Security Committee.

Some in the Muslim community wonder whether negative portrayals of Islam in Western media could have had some causal effect in the killing of the three young people, all of whom were U.S.-born and of Syrian descent.

Poll after poll since the 9/11 attacks on the USA have shown Islam to be held in low regard by significant slices of America.

Twin surveys released last week by LifeWay Research, a non-profit Christian research group, found that 27% of Americans and 45% of Protestant pastors believe ISIL offers a true representation of Islamic society. A Brookings Institution poll published last month found that 14% of Americans believe the Islamic State has the support of a majority of Muslims worldwide.

"What if Islamophobia has become so commonplace, so accepted, that it now represents a hegemonic system of thought, at least for relatively large pockets of people in some regions of the West?" Mohamad Elmasry, an assistant professor of communications at the University of North Alabama, wrote in an editorial for Al Jazeera.

Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday criticized Obama and senior administration officials for being slow to speak out on the killings. On Friday afternoon, the president addressed the tragedy.

"No one in the United States of America should ever be targeted because of who they are, what they look like or how they worship," he said in a written statement.

Barakat, a second-year dental student at UNC, and his wife, Mohammad, were committed humanitarians who saw service to fellow Americans and Muslims as essential parts of their faith, according to friends and colleagues.

Last year, the couple traveled to Turkey to provide free dental care to students, and Barakat had started raising funds for a return trip to help Syrian refugees. In 2012, Barakat traveled as a volunteer with the Palestine Children's Relief Fund to the West Bank to provide dental care to children. The couple also volunteered their services to the homeless near their home in Chapel Hill.

Maha Madani, a social worker who interacted with Barakat during the West Bank mission, recalled that he arrived at work with a bright smile that wouldn't leave his face throughout the day.

"For instance, he'd come up to a little girl and ask her, "What's your name, beautiful?' " Madani recalled in an e-mail. "She'd answer with, "My name is Hind" and he'd continue teasingly, 'Wow, Hind! That's such a beautiful name, and you have such a beautiful smile. Can I borrow your teeth to have that same beautiful smile?' "

In a conversation she had with a former teacher last summer that was recorded by the StoryCorps oral history project, Abu-Salha said, "Growing up in America has been such a blessing."

"Although in some ways I do stand out, such as the hijab I wear on my head, there are so many ways that I feel so embedded in the fabric that is our culture," she said.

Mahdi Sahloul, 18, who like the victims is Muslim and Syrian-American, said that the killings have torn at his heart because the victims were combining their faith and service to communities in the way he aspires to do.

"I feel connected to them," said Sahloul, who helped organize a candlelight vigil in Chicago to commemorate their lives. "I've thought to myself, what if this was me? What if this happened to my brother? What if this happened to one of our friends? This could be us."

While the public debate has been more divisive in Europe, where countries such as France and Belgium have instituted bans on women wearing headscarves or face-covering veils, Muslims say there has been no shortage of hostility to Islam in America.

The Muslim community in Murfreesboro, Tenn., fought a years-long battle with local opponents to build a mosque in the community about 30 miles from Nashville. The confrontation, which included televangelist Pat Robertson claiming Muslims were taking over the city and an arsonist setting fire to construction equipment on the building site, came to an end last year when the Supreme Court refused to hear the case.

In December, officials in St. Anthony Village, Minn., relented after being sued by the Justice Department and issued a permit to members of Abu-Huraira Islamic Center who had spent two years battling to be allowed to use office space they acquired for religious services.

Last month, Duke University canceled plans to allow Muslim students to amplify the Friday call to prayer from the chapel's bell tower after criticism and threats.

Muslim leaders have chafed at comments by comedian Bill Maher and media baron Rupert Murdoch after last month's attack in France. Maher and Murdoch suggested that Muslims collectively held some responsibility for the bloodshed.

And the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee recently raised concerns to film director Clint Eastwood and actor Bradley Cooper about an increase in threatening commentary toward Muslims and Arabs on social media inspired by their blockbuster American Sniper.

"When you add all those things together, it's intimidating and it's worrying," said Haroon Moghul, a Ph.D. student at Columbia University in New York who has written extensively about Islam.

Eboo Patel, who heads Interfaith Youth Core, speaks around the country promoting interfaith cooperation. But Patel, who is Muslim, said he still regularly faces skepticism — often bordering on hostility.

Some of that, he suspects, is informed by people whose only exposure to Islam is press coverage of al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and Boko Haram, the vicious group that strives to create a Islamic territory in West Africa.

He recalled being approached at a speaking engagement in Kansas City, where a man asked, "What the heck is wrong with you people?"

Patel recalled, "My response was, 'If the only thing I knew about Kansas City was what I saw on the first minute of the local news every night, I would also be saying what's wrong with you people."

By Aamer Madhani USA TODAY