Names marked with an asterisk have been changed to protect identities.

When Akmal’s* mosque was vandalised last week in Basildon, a town in the English county of Essex, he felt shaken.

“I was so hurt,” said the 33-year-old electrical engineer, who requested Al Jazeera use a pseudonym. “It was so close to home. My local masjid [mosque]. It felt like a real kick in the teeth.”

The South Essex Islamic Centre in Basildon was defaced shortly before midnight on Thursday. Red crosses were daubed across its walls alongside the words “Christ is King” and “This is England”.

The timing, the night before Friday prayers, appeared to many as calculated – an attempt to intimidate a flurry of worshippers in the southeastern English county.

“My wife and baby are growing up here,” Akmal told Al Jazeera

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