While the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon put many Muslim Americans unjustly in an unfavorable spotlight among Islamophobes and xenophobes, President Barack Obama's presidency hasn't done much better to quell stereotypical beliefs and fears in some of America's rural communities.

Following the Sept. 11 attacks, stories of Islamic communities and mosques being vandalized were making headlines across the nation. Thirteen years later and that's still in the case in some towns.

The first time the Islamic Society of the Appalachian Region Center in Princeton, W.Va. was vandalized occurred right after the attacks. Since then, however, the small community seemed to welcome its Muslim population, according to Al Jazeera America.

That is until this past December, when Dr. Riaz Riaz drove to the ISAR Center to perform his afternoon prayers and found Islamaphobic insults on the wall sprayed in red paint.

Back then, the community and its law enforcement agency deemed the incident a hate crime, but Mercer County Sheriff Don Meadows said this recent incident is not classified as a hate crime.

Meadows told a local news station that, because there was another vandalism incident that took place nearby and around the same day, it wasn't a hate crime.

Like Riaz, who is ISAR's executive committee president, many Muslim doctors moved to Princeton or other similar rural towns in the country because there have been a growing need for physicians in those areas.

Princeton and its neighbor Bluefield, with a combined population of 16,000, have seen a steady increase in Muslim population since the 1980s and '90s. Fifty families came together in the late '90s to construct a mosque, which has served the Muslim community for more than a decade.

"This is our home," Riaz said. "many of us have been here for decades, and we fell in love with the area's natural beauty and the courtesy of its people.

According to FBI statistics, besides the spike in post-9/11, hate crimes against Muslims have decreased. However, since 2010, there has been a resurgence in attacks.

A member of the mosque's executive committee, who decided to remain unnamed, said he attributes the recent uprising to two reasons, one is the fact that most the residents in rural towns really hate President Obama and believe him to be a Muslim, which he isn't.

"Things are definitely worse now than they were then," he said. "Part of this is our own fault. Most of the members of our community are doctors. Why don't we run a free clinic? Why don't we have a pantry? This is a very impoverished area, and there's so much more we could be doing to build bridges."