Community leaders in France had been sounding the alarm about rising anti-Muslim sentiment since the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine massacre in Paris on Jan. 7. Now new figures compiled by a watchdog group suggest anti-Muslim incidents have spiked to never before seen proportions. In the two weeks following attacks that saw three Kalashnikov-wielding Islamist terrorists kill 17 people, including Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, three police officers, and four Jewish hostages in a kosher supermarket, nearly as many anti-Muslim incidents were reported as throughout all of 2014.
The National Observatory Against Islamophobia says there were 128 anti-Muslim incidents reported in France between the Charlie Hebdo killings and Jan. 20, compared to 133 last year. The Islamophobia monitoring group, linked to the French Council of the Muslim Faith, notes the figure only takes into account incidents reported to law enforcement. It leaves aside victims who haven’t bothered out of fear or resignation. It also leaves out numbers not yet available for Paris and its immediate suburbs, where a disproportionate number of the nation’s Muslims live and work. The 128 incidents cited are said to include 33 acts, including attacks on mosques, and 95 threats.
“Islamophobic acts have reached a peak of hate toward French people of the Muslim confession never before recorded,” Abdallah Zekri, the observatory’s president, told Agence France-Presse, noting the incidents for the first time included lobbed grenades and shots fired. “These acts against one part of the national community, provoked by little Nazi pretenders who spend their days decorating the walls of our mosques with Nazi slogans, recall a sad past and are reprehensible,” he said.
Indeed, in the days following the Charlie Hebdo attacks, perpetrated by three terrorists claiming ties to both ISIS and Al-Qaeda in Yemen, local French press was littered with stories of violent prejudice against Muslims. A plaster grenade hit a mosque in Le Mans and shots were reported fired at several mosques across the country. Arson badly damaged a mosque in Aix-les-Bains. Several mosques were vandalized with spray-painted slogans ranging from “Arabs Get Out” to swastikas and an ominous “Ich Bin Charlie.” In Corsica, intestines and the head of a wild boar were reportedly found hooked to the door of a Muslim prayer room.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/25/after-charlie-hebdo-attacks-french-muslims-face-increased-threats.html
Firebombs and pigs heads thrown into mosques as anti-Muslim attacks increase after Paris shootings
Twenty-six mosques around France have been subject to attack by firebombs, gunfire, pig heads, and grenades as Muslims are targeted with violence in the wake of the Paris attacks.
France’s National Observatory Against Islamophobia reports that since last Wednesday a total of 60 Islamophobic incidents have been recorded, with countless minor encounters believed to have gone unreported.
Amongst the incidents, a mosque in Le Mans was hit with four grenades, and gunfire directed through one of its windows.
While Islamophobic incidents are nothing new, there appears to have been a marked increase in attacks in the wake of the shootings at the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/firebombs-and-pigs-heads-thrown-into-mosques-as-antimuslim-attacks-increase-after-paris-shootings-9977423.html
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