French Muslims Under Attack

The attacks targeting Muslim properties and mosques across France have spread fears among the religious minority.

Friday, January 9, 2015

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PARIS – Several attacks were reported on Wednesday and Thursday on Muslim mosques and facilities across France, as the country entered a new era of anti-Islam hate after Charlie Hebdo satirical weekly.

Agence France-Presse cited officials who said there had been "several attacks against France mosques" since the Charlie Hebdo killings, although no further details have been released, with only two such attacks so far confirmed.

Nick Lowles of anti-racist campaign group Hope Not Hate has issued a call for caution stating "let us not fool ourselves: a new page has been turned and things could get very difficult in the coming days and weeks."

"Anti-Muslim protests are likely to gather pace across Europe, community relations will be tested to their limits and violent attacks could well increase.

"Under the guise of free speech, it's likely that the haters will emerge – from both sides – seeking to drag us all down into the quagmire of their hatred and a world which they would happily turn to ash. Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen."

"Let us remember those who lost their lives in Paris by promising to re-double our efforts to stand up for equality, tolerance, democracy and respect.

The attacks came hours after gunmen attacked Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday.

France's Agence France Presse (AFP) said the men were armed with at least one rocket launcher.

Officials said two police officers were among those killed, and that the other 10 were journalists.

The editor-in-chief of Charlie Hebdo, Stephane Charbonnier, known as Charb, has reportedly been killed in the attack, judicial sources told AFP.

Seeing the Charlie Hebdo attack as a betrayal of Islamic faith, leaders from Muslim countries and organizations have joined worldwide condemnation of the attack, saying the attackers should not be associated with Islam.

Spreading Fear

The attacks targeting Muslim properties and mosques across France have spread fears among the religious minority.

According to Channel 4, one attack took place at a kebab shop next to a mosque in the town of Villefranche-sur-Saône, north of Lyon.

Another blast was reported at about 6am and destroyed the glass frontage of the kebab shop. No injuries were reported.

Hand grenades were reportedly thrown at another mosque in Le Mans, which lies south west of Paris.

Four training grenades were lobbed into the mosque, local media said.

One of the grenades exploded while the three others were found undetonated on Thursday morning.

The attacks have resulted in no arrests by police, but the area has been cordoned off by its forces, local authorities told AFP.

Two further apparent anti-Muslim attacks took place immediately after the Hebdo killings.

Several shots were fired towards a Muslim prayer hall in Port-la-Nouvelle, near Narbonne in southern France, shortly after evening prayers at about 8pm on Wednesday.

Shots were fired at a parked car belonging to a family of Muslims in Caromb, near Avignon, that same evening.

The newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, in its raucous, vulgar and sometimes commercially driven effort to offend every Islamic piety, including the figure of the Prophet Muhammad, became a symbol of an aggressive French secularism that saw its truest enemy in the rise of conservative Islam in France.

France is home to a Muslim minority of six millions, Europe’s largest.

Charlie Hebdo has a long reputation for being provocative.

In September 2012, the French weekly published cartoons displaying a man said to be the prophet as naked.

The cartoons came amid turmoil in the Muslim world over an American-made movie defaming the Prophet.

In 2011, the office of the magazine was firebombed after it published an edition "guest-edited by Muhammad", which the satirical weekly called Shari`ah Hebdo.

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