GARLAND, Texas (Reuters) - At a small mosque in Texas near the site where two gunmen were shot dead after trying to storm an exhibit of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad, there was little sympathy for the assailants or the organizers of the event.

"It is frustrating because freedom of speech is a very good thing. But you don’t use it to make a mockery out of the person. You don’t do it to be disrespectful," said Mohammed Jetpuri, a retired North Texas resident who was one of about 10 men who came for prayers at Makkah Masjid, in Garland, the same melting-pot Dallas suburb of nearly a quarter million people where the shooting occurred.

The well-worn mosque, located in a community center, is about 4 miles from where the shooting took place.

Muslims in the area knew well about the exhibit by the American Freedom Defense Initiative, a free-speech organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center has described as a hate group, and which paid $10,000 for extra security.

For the most part, area Muslims stayed away, waiting for it to be over.

"It was not even worth protesting," said Siddiq Moon, a North Texas business owner.

The shooters did not represent the teachings of Islam and got what was coming to them, many at the mosque said.

"I don’t feel bad for them. I am sorry for their parents," Moon said.

Two government sources who asked not to be named said the shooters were roommates Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi, of Phoenix. Court documents show that Simpson had been under surveillance since 2006 and convicted of lying to FBI agents over his desire to join violent jihad in Somalia.

"We reiterate the American Muslim community’s support for freedom of speech - even bigoted speech – and its repudiation of terrorism in any form," said the Dallas-Fort Worth branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization.

Anti-Islam sentiment has been growing in parts of the United States, including Texas, where many see the religion as an enemy.

At a Sam’s Club next to the center where the shootings took place, Jimmy Hanks, 42, a disabled veteran who served with the U.S. Army in Bosnia, said Islam posed a danger to the country.

"This is the next thing that is going to be happening here a lot. We are going to be seeing more of these attacks by Islamists on our soil," Hanks said.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Additional reporting by Lisa Maria Garza and Marice Richter in Dallas; Editing by Leslie Adler)