OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — A man fired from an Oklahoma food processing plant beheaded a woman with a knife and was attacking another worker when he was shot and wounded by a company official, police said Friday.

Moore Police Sgt. Jeremy Lewis said police are waiting until Alton Nolen, 30, is conscious to arrest him in Thursday's attack and have asked the FBI to help investigate after co-workers at Vaughan Foods in the south Oklahoma City suburb told authorities that he recently started trying to convert several employees to Islam.

Nolen severed the head of Colleen Hufford, 54, Lewis said.

"Yes, she was beheaded," Lewis told The Associated Press before a Friday news conference.

Lewis said Nolen then stabbed Traci Johnson, 43, a number of times before Mark Vaughan, a reserve sheriff's deputy and the company's chief operating officer, shot him.

"This was not going to stop if he didn't stop it. It could have gotten a lot worse," Lewis said. "The threat had already stopped once we arrived."

Lewis said Moore police have asked the FBI to look into the man's background because of the nature of the attack, which follows a series of videotaped beheadings by Islamic State militants.

In a statement, FBI Special Agent in Charge James E. Finch said the motive for the attack has not been determined but that there is no reason to believe there is a threat to anyone else.

A law enforcement official familiar with the investigation told the AP that while there was indication that Nolen was a Muslim convert and was trying to convert others to Islam, there is so far no connection to terrorism and no evidence of any worrisome travel.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, said Nolen had a Facebook page that was of potential interest to investigators but that "there doesn't appear to be any nexus to terrorism right now." But the official also said investigators were still looking into Nolen's background.

Johnson and the suspect were hospitalized and in stable condition Friday, Lewis said. Nolen had not yet been charged and Lewis said he didn't know what charges the suspect would face.

Oklahoma Department of Corrections records say Nolen has served time in prison and is on probation for assault and battery on a police officer. He also was convicted of cocaine possession with intent to distribute in 2011.

Oklahoma City beheading (video)

Lewis said Nolen had been fired in a building that houses the company's human resources office, then immediately drove to the entrance of the business. Lewis said he didn't know why the man was fired.

A Vaughan spokeswoman said the company was "shocked and deeply saddened" by the attack.

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Associated Press writer Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.

These are difficult days to be a Muslim in the United States.

There was, for example, the drunk man who chased Linda Sarsour and her friend down a New York City street earlier this month calling the two women “f---ing Arabs” and threatening to “chop off your f---ing heads and see how your people like it.”

There was also the gang of young Jewish men who circled her mosque in cars earlier this summer, blasting sirens at worshippers as they arrived and screaming anti-Arab slurs in the pre-dawn darkness.

Related: More than 100 Muslim Clerics Sign Letter Condemning ISIS

Sarsour, the executive director of the Arab American Association of New York, says she sees evidence of it all the time at her office, which provides various social services. More than once, she said, Muslim women wearing the same traditional headscarf she wears have arrived shaking with fear after being spat on in the street.

“Psychologically, it makes people feel like they aren’t wanted,” said the Brooklyn-born Sarsour, who bristles at the suggestion that she isn’t a “real” American. “Don’t tell me I don’t belong here, to go back to my country,” she said, echoing the taunts she’s heard on the street. “This is my country.”

The turmoil in the Middle East over the past months has metastasized into heated rhetoric and violence among Muslim communities in cities across Europe, particularly in countries where Muslims are not integrated into the mainstream of society and are viewed with suspicion.

The United States has been luckier in that respect and it’s largely because U.S. Muslims are generally well integrated into the community. But as violence erupted this summer between Israel and the Palestinian population of Gaza, and as the murderous terrorist group ISIS publicly beheaded American journalists in Iraq as part of its campaign to establish a so-called Islamic State, increasing anti-Muslim sentiment seems to threaten the very integration that has helped protect the U.S. from violence at home.

Related: Why ISIS Hasn’t Scared the Stock Market

The New York City Police Department, for example, recorded seven anti-Muslim hate crimes in all of 2013. There have been 17 so far in 2014, 14 of which have happened since July 1.

“The sad thing is if it is happening in New York City, one of the most diverse and liberal cities in the country if not the world, God only knows what’s happening in the rest of the country,” said Sarsour.

“There’s definitely been a rise in anti-Muslim rhetoric in our society,” said Maya Berry, executive director of the Washington, DC-based Arab American Institute. “Regrettably…the situation is worse than immediately after 9/11.”

The AAI’s most recent survey on “American Attitudes toward Arabs and Muslims,” conducted this summer, found that Arabs and Muslims have the lowest favorable and highest unfavorable rating of all ethnic and religious groups assessed. The survey also found that 42 percent of Americans “support the use of profiling by law enforcement against Arab Americans and American Muslims” and that many do not believe an Arab or Muslim citizen should be allowed to hold significant public office.

Related: The ISIS Coalition Is a Major Victory for Obama

Unfortunately, in some parts of the country, lawmakers seem to be doing their best to aggravate the situation. Earlier this month, Republican Oklahoma State Senator John Bennett repeatedly made statements attacking the Islamic faith, calling it a “cancer that needs to be cut out” of the United States.

Rather than repudiate Bennett’s remarks, Oklahoma State Republican Party Chairman Dave Weston backed him up, saying, “If we as Americans were ruled by Islam, then Christians and Jews like you and I could only keep practicing our faith if we paid a protection tax. But if you’re Christian or Jewish and don’t immediately convert to Islam, they imminently decapitate you. This is proven by ongoing observation around the world today.”

Mark Potok, spokesperson for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate crimes, called the statements “despicable,” and said that the rise in anti-Islamic rhetoric in the U.S. almost certainly leads to an increase in hate crimes against Muslims.

“Words have consequences,” Potok said. “Certainly people may make these kinds of statements under the first amendment, but it doesn’t make them any less poisonous. The comments of leaders play out in the criminal activities of people who listen to them.”

Related: Obama’s Tough Talk May Not Be Enough to Beat ISIS

Indeed, just days after Bennett’s remarks, Imad Enchassi, senior Imam at the Islamic Council of Greater Oklahoma started receiving specific threats that his congregation’s mosque would be burned down during Friday services, with his congregation inside.

“We’re going to chop your head off. We’re going to burn your mosque,” Enchassi said in an interview, ticking off some of the threats he has received. “We got specific threats of beheading Muslims in the state. Beheading children.”

Enchassi has lived in Oklahoma since the 1980s, and has lived through the Oklahoma City bombing, for which Muslim terrorists were originally blamed. He lived through 9/11 and Oklahoma’s attempt to ban Sharia Law in 2010.

He says he has never seen anti-Muslim sentiment worse. “This is a first for us in this state,” he said.

Enchassi, who is also chairman of the Department of Islamic Studies at the University of Oklahoma City said that death threats directed at him personally have become so common, “I just go on my Facebook page and tell them to stand in line.”

But for the members of his community, he said, the threats are no joke. The adults try to shield children from too much knowledge of what is being said about people like them, but it’s difficult. On days when the threats are particularly bad, he said, children at the Islamic Council’s school are kept inside at recess out of fear of attacks.

It’s the effect on children that troubles Linda Sarsour, too.

“How do you tell a 12 year old kid – born in Brooklyn – why this is happening?” she asks angrily. “You can’t explain this. Kids are saying they’re afraid to tell people they’re Muslim because they might hurt them. Kids shouldn’t be thinking about that.”

Serving the Arab American community after 9/11 (video)

Threats now a daily event for many U.S. Muslims

In NYC, the number of hate crimes against this group more than doubled in a year, with 14 since July 1.
'Worse than ... after 9/11'

LONDON (AP) — Britain, Belgium and Denmark on Friday joined the U.S.-led coalition of nations that are launching airstrikes on Islamic State group in Iraq, committing warplanes to the struggle against the extremists.

The European lawmakers flatly described the moves as critical to security on home soil, arguing that facing down terrorists has become a matter of urgency. British Prime Minister David Cameron made a passionate plea for action in drastic terms — noting that the militants had beheaded their victims, gouged out eyes and carried out crucifixions to promote goals "from the Dark Ages."

"This is about psychopathic terrorists that are trying to kill us and we do have to realize that, whether we like it or not, they have already declared war on us," he said. "There isn't a 'walk on by' option. There isn't an option of just hoping this will go away."

Cameron told a tense House of Commons during more than six hours of debate that the hallmarks of the campaign would be "patience and persistence, not shock and awe" — a reference to the phrase associated with the invasion of Iraq.

That unpopular intervention has cast a shadow over the discussions because critics fear that Europe will be drawn into a wider conflict, specifically taking on the Islamic group's fighters in Syria.

British lawmakers voted 524-43 for action after being urgently recalled from a recess. Belgian also overwhelmingly approved, voting 114-2 to take part, despite widespread concerns that more terrorism may follow in their homeland as a result.

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A demonstrator holds a banner near Parliament in London, Friday, Sept. 26, 2014. Britain's Parli …

In May, Belgium was shaken when a gunman opened fire at a Jewish museum in Brussels, killing four people. The suspect, French citizen Mehdi Nemouche, has been identified as a returning Islamic fighter from Syria, and leaders in Belgium and other European countries have expressed their fears that other returnees from Syria and Iraq may cause further havoc.

"We must fight against torture, against decapitations, so it's time to act," said Belgian lawmaker Veli Yuksel, a Flemish Christian Democrat

Denmark pledged seven F-16 fighter jets. Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt said her government would send four operational planes and three reserve jets along with 250 pilots and support staff for 12 months. Lawmakers in Denmark must also approve, but that is considered a formality.

"No one should be ducking in this case" she said. "Everyone should contribute."

Britain is expected to deploy Tornado GR4 aircraft, a handful of which are in Cyprus, within striking distance of northern Iraq.

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File - In this March 28, 2011 file photo, a Belgian pilot gestures as he sits in the cockpit of a F- …

The Tornados give the coalition an enhanced ability to hit moving targets with the use of the Dual Mode Brimstone missile, said Ben Goodlad from IHS Jane's. He said the weapons have a particular ability to hit convoys and fleeing targets.

The British resolution does not address any action in Syria, though many lawmakers tried to push the government to admit that this is the likely next step.

Cameron has justified action in Iraq as lawful because the Iraqi leadership has asked for help.

No European nation has yet agreed to join the U.S. and some Arab states in strikes in Syria.

The motion before Britain's Parliament set no time limit, and that caused unease. Many lawmakers suggested the fight could stretch for years.

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File - In this March 28, 2011 file photo, a Belgian F-16 fighter jet lands as it returns from a miss …

"ISIL is a death cult, it's a gang of terrorist murderers. It's not an army and it's certainly not an army that's going to be destroyed by aerial bombardment," said legislator George Galloway, using a former name for the radicals.

Cameron ensured his success by keeping the motion narrowly tailored — staving off the defeat suffered a year ago when Parliament shot down the idea of intervening in Syria to thwart Assad's use of chemical weapons.

Defense Secretary Michael Fallon later indicated that the government might later ask Parliament for support for Syrian airstrikes.

"ISIL is based in Syria, that's where its headquarters are, that's where its resources, its people are. To deal with ISIL you do have to deal and defeat them in both Iraq and in Syria," he told BBC. "We are taking this in a calm, measured way, step-by-step, but it is clear to us that obviously ISIL, in the end, has to be tackled on a broader front."

____

Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, and John-Thor Dahlburg in Brussels contributed.

China is the top oil investor in Iraq, and Islamic State leaders say they have Chinese recruits. But Beijing is reluctant to get involved due to limited military capability in the Middle East and mistrust of US intentions.

One might expect China to be heavily invested in the international fight to stop Islamic State jihadists from taking over Iraq and Syria: For starters, China is the number one investor in Iraq's oil industry. Yet, Beijing is almost nowhere to be seen in anti-IS coalition discussions. Why?

There are reasons enough for China to get involved. The Asian giant’s economy depends on the Middle East for half its imported energy. China now imports more oil from the region than the United States does, and is the largest investor in the Iraqi oil industry.

And as the Chinese authorities step up their battle against increasingly violent Muslim separatists in the western province of Xinjiang, Islamic State leaders boast of Chinese recruits to their self-declared caliphate.

Recommended: How much do you know about the Islamic State?

China’s contribution to the international military assault on Islamic State targets, however, is a timid offer of “intelligence sharing and personnel training” by Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

China’s rulers are reluctant to get more heavily involved for a number of reasons, say analysts here, ranging from their mistrust of American intentions to a fear of being sucked out of their depth into the Middle East maelstrom.

They are also disappointed that Western governments have been skeptical about Beijing’s hardline response to ethnic unrest among Uighurs in Xinjiang, and they are adamant that only the United Nations can authorize military action in a sovereign state’s territory.

For the first time this week, the state-run Chinese media linked Xinjiang militants to the self-named Islamic State. The Global Times, owned by the ruling Communist Party, quoted an unidentified Chinese “anti-terrorism worker” as saying Uighur militants “want…to expand their connections in international terrorist organizations through actual combat to gain support for escalation of terrorist activities in China.”

In July, the man who has declared himself the caliph of Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, claimed that he counted Chinese citizens among his fighters, and accused the Chinese government of “extreme torture and degradation of Muslims” in “East Turkestan,” the name that pro-independence forces give to Xinjiang.

ISLAMIST 'TERRORISM' IN CHINA

More than 300 people have died in escalating violence in Xinjiang over the past 18 months, and Uighur terrorists killed 31 people in a knife attack last March on Kunming railway station in southeastern China.

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China's U.N. Ambassador Liu Jieyi speaks during a meeting on Iraq in the U.N. Security Council, Frid …

Beijing blames the violence on the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) and the World Uighur Congress; Chinese officials are angry that Western governments do not share their analysis.

The US State Department took ETIM off its list of international terrorist organizations amid doubts over its real status and role. Outside China the World Uighur Congress is considered a peaceful minority rights group pushing for Uighur independence.

Beijing considers such tolerance incoherent. “The fight against terrorism should not have double standards,” says Li Shaoxian, deputy head of the China Institute for Contemporary International Relations, a think tank affiliated with the security forces. “It should respect the rights and wishes of all the countries involved.”

At the same time, the Chinese government is growing increasingly dubious about US intentions and suspicious that Washington and its allies are seeking to contain China and undermine the Communist Party, suggests Zhao Chu, an independent political commentator.

China’s reticence about joining the US-led coalition “is a very obvious symbol of Chinese doubts about US purposes,” says Mr. Zhao.

Zhao argued in a recent blog that Beijing should play a more active role to underline its “concern with international order and justice” and to give its armed forces an opportunity to fight alongside the US military and learn from them.

In a sign of how forcefully the authorities disagree with such thinking, his two blogs were closed down days after he posted his essay on them.

LIMITED INTERNATIONAL CAPABILITIES

Chinese officials also point out that in practical terms there is not a lot China can do to help the fight against IS because “our international capabilities are limited,” as former ambassador to Iran Hua Liming puts it.

On Wednesday China did vote, along with every other member of the United Nations Security Council, for a resolution requiring governments to “suppress the recruiting, organizing, transporting, equipping” and financing of “foreign terrorist fighters.”

But China could not fly bombing sorties because it has no airbases in or near the region, nor does it have any functioning aircraft carriers. The idea of sending troops to support the Iraqi army is unthinkable.

That prospect is “far from the imagination,” says Mr. Hua, both because China has never sent any soldiers to the region before and because even the US government has ruled out sending troops to Iraq or Syria.

The most daring military operation China has engaged in since its brief war with Vietnam in 1979 was announced this week. Beijing will send a 700 man combat-ready battalion to beef up the United Nations peacekeeping force in South Sudan.

China buys 5 percent of its imported oil from South Sudan, and Chinese diplomats have been closely engaged in negotiations to bring peace to the troubled young country. But the UN mandate for the peacekeepers is essential for Chinese participation.

The UN Security Council has issued no such mandate for military action in Syria, but China has been uncharacteristically subdued on this point. Unlike Russia, which has vehemently criticized the Western-led aerial assault on Syrian territory, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman this week merely “noted” the military operations, hoped they would cause no civilian casualties, and insisted that they “should comply with the purposes and principles of the UN Charter.”

“China always supports the counter-terrorism efforts made by the international community,” added the spokeswoman, Hua Chunying. “China consistently and firmly opposes all forms of terrorism.” For the time being, it seems, rhetoric is as much as the rest of the world can expect from Beijing.

Related Video

US-led air strikes on Islamic State (IS) militants have destroyed four tanks and damaged another during a fourth night of bombardments in Syria.

The Pentagon said it also carried out seven strikes on IS positions in Iraq, including one on the outskirts of the capital, Baghdad.

The Danish government says it is sending seven F-16 fighter jets to join anti-IS operations - but only in Iraq.

The UK parliament is due to vote on possible air strikes in Iraq on Friday.

The Islamic State is meanwhile advancing on the Syrian border town of Kobane, pushing back Kurdish fighters, reports the Reuters news agency.

Hundreds of protesters stormed the border fence in order to cross into Syria from Turkey to help defend the town, it says.

IS controls much of north-eastern Syria and earlier this year seized swathes of territory in neighbouring Iraq, including the second city, Mosul.

Watch video

After previous US-led air strikes, IS militants beheaded three Western hostages.

Some Western leaders are wary of bombing Syria, as the government there has not asked for foreign assistance against IS, unlike Iraq.

The tanks were destroyed in the oil-rich Deir al-Zour province, the US Department of Defense said in a statement.

It also said strikes in Iraq had destroyed nine IS vehicles and damaged others.

The strikes were carried out by "a mix of fighter, attack and remotely piloted aircraft".

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict in Syria, said the new strikes caused casualties but the numbers were unclear.

Recent air strikes have been targeting oil facilities under IS control in both countries in order to reduce its finances.

Watch video

The militant group is earning an estimated $2m (£1.2m) a day from oil sales.

On Thursday, the European Union's anti-terrorism chief told the BBC that about 3,000 Europeans had gone to join armed Islamist groups in the region.

Gilles de Kerchove also warned that Western air strikes would increase the risk of retaliatory attacks in Europe.

Where do Islamic State's foreign fighters come from?

Earlier, Spain's interior ministry said Spanish and Moroccan police had arrested nine people suspected of belonging to a militant cell linked to the IS group.

A statement from the ministry said the suspects belonged to a group based in the Spanish enclave of Melilla, on the northern coast of Africa, and the neighbouring town of Nador, in Morocco.

One of those arrested is reported to be Spanish; the rest are Moroccan nationals.

Some 140,000 people are said to have fled the IS advance on Kobane in recent days, crossing into Turkey.

Earlier this week, the UN Security Council adopted a binding resolutioncompelling states to prevent their nationals from joining jihadists in Iraq and Syria.

US President Barack Obama this week urged other countries to take part in the fight against IS, calling it a "network of death".

More than 40 countries, including several from the Middle East, have offered to join in, US officials say.

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