Organizers are planning about 20 anti-Muslim rallies this weekend across the USA, putting officials at many mosques on high alert and prompting many community leaders to urge Muslims to take precautions in case demonstrations turn violent.

The goal of the Global Rally for Humanity, which is asking supporters to create a Facebook page for each protest planned, is to gather a group in front of every mosque in the country — in part to counter a Nation of Islam rally in the District of Columbia to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Million Man March. The number of mosques in the United States has risen from about 1,200 in 2000 to 2,100 five years ago, according to a study from the Hartford Institute for Religion Research titled The American Mosque 2011.

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"We’ve never had this many events targeting mosques in this kind of national way," Heidi Beirich, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said in a conference call earlier this week. "This is widespread in a way that these things have not been before."

The demonstrations underscore a growing anti-Islam movement in the U.S., which has been exacerbated by rhetoric on the presidential campaign trail and the refugee crisis in Europe, she said.

"In one of their emails, they said they were going to bring 3,000 people to Washington, D.C., in front of our mosque, and they instructed them to bring their weapons," said Ibrahim Mumin, director of community relations for Masjid Muhammad mosque. "Well, we consider that kind of a threat."