VEGHEL, the Netherlands – Officials in a local mosque in southern Dutch town of Veghel have insisted they are open to communication with everyone, inviting those who attacked the mosque last week to visit and share their troubles.

“I wish those who did this would prefer to share their troubles with us,” Mehmet Imamoglu, spokesman of the Selimiye Mosque in the southern town of Veghel, told Anadolu Agency on Tuesday, July 18.

“We are open to communicating with everyone. Maybe that would be more useful.”

Suspected members of the anti-immigration PEGIDA group hung threatening and anti-Muslim posters on a fence surrounding the construction site of the new Selimiye Mosque, work on which began in December 2016.

The group later used social media to claim responsibility for the action.

The attack is the first in this region, where local people have long rejected these Islamophobic acts, according to Imamoglu.

“Before the construction began, a group of neighborhood residents who did not want the mosque went to court. After the court ruled in favor of us, we fixed and improved our relations with the group as we contacted them,” he said.

“Sometimes they even help us,” Imamoglu added, noting that nearly 2,000 Turks were living in Veghel alongside Dutch people, without problems.

Muslims make up one million of the Netherlands’s 16 million population, mostly from Turkish and Moroccan origin.