A group of activists have decided to give back this Thanksgiving by fighting hate speech.

Ahmed Khalifa, Jon Liedtke and a few friends are painting the town to erase a string of Islamophobic slurs.

Khalifa told AM800 News posts of hate speech on utility boxes, underpasses and bus-stops were making the rounds on a Facebook group he belongs to.

"We found things that said, 'Islam means surrender, Islam equals ISIS, and death to all Muslims,'" says Khalifa. "Some had similar hand-writing, some others didn't"

Liedtke decided a beautiful fall Sunday was the perfect day to use up some old paint, and Khalifa joined him.

Khalifa says the city is aware of the graffiti and promised it would be addressed. He wanted to make it clear it was more about not wanting to wait.

The tagging was reported several weeks ago, he says.

"Jon actually started, he was taking paint and painting over these messages because he found it shocking that they've stayed up for as long as they did," Khalifa says. "It wasn't only him [Jon], there are other people doing the same thing. I decided to meet up with him and we were painting over some of the messages we found on Huron Church Rd."

Ahmed Khalifa paints over Islamophobic graffiti on Huron Church Rd. Sunday October 8, 2017. (Photo courtesy of Facebook)

The 21-year-old University of Windsor student says, as a Muslim man, he can't stand by while people continue to associate Islam with militant groups like ISIS who distort religion to suit their needs.

"These people are not a part of us, their actions are not Muslim in any way," he says. "The same way, that if the KKK did something, a hate crime, we wouldn't ask Christians what their response is, because we would know that these people are a perverted group with a perverted ideology, and they've taken certain aspects of a religion and transformed them to fit their narrative."

He told AM800 News they found a clear pattern to the vandalism— there were several styles of handwriting that kept appearing in other areas.

"I took it upon myself to collect all these images that people took and I made a document out of it to track where we were finding them," says Khalifa. "We found that they concentrated on the west-end, but also along bus routes throughout the city. So it seems like this person, or this group of people, have been taking the bus and just deciding to vandalize certain parts of the city with Islamophobic remarks."

Windsor police have confirmed, these incidents are being looked into and patrols have been directed to keep a close eye out for offenders.

Jon Liedtke poses in front of Islamophobic graffiti covered up throughout Windsor on Sunday October 8, 2017. (Photo courtesy of Jon Liedtke)