Officer who designed police hijab aims to inspire Muslim women to join force

November 27, 2020 Article

A police officer who helped design a new hijab because the one provided was uncomfortable and unsafe said she hopes it will inspire other Muslim women to join the force.

Pc Uzma Amireddy, a positive action coordinator, said the hijab given to her by North Yorkshire Police was uncomfortable, did not look good and was potentially unsafe in hostile situations.

She told the PA news agency: “If you want to attract people from diverse backgrounds they have to feel and look good in their uniform and something like that certainly will put people off joining.

“That’s why I took it on myself.”

After she took the issue to her chief officer – Pc Arfan Rahouf, who is the force’s operational lead for faith and belief, got involved in the development.

With input from Pc Amireddy, he set about finding a hijab that would be suitable.

They sourced one from a local supplier and suggested some alterations to help make it more suitable for use by officers – for example, the head and neck are detachable, meaning if someone were to grab and pull it, it will not pull around the neck.

Pc Rahouf said: “It looks professional, it looks smart, it’s safe, she feels beautiful in in it, she feels comfortable, she feels valued by the organisation because they’ve provided it and it’s just something that represents her faith.”

On Monday, Pc Amireddy wore the hijab on the streets for the first time.

She said: “When I went out on the streets of North Yorkshire – and I know it’s only one shift and I don’t know what the future holds – but it went really well and I think people saw past the hijab – which I wanted.

“Because I don’t want to be in the spotlight, I don’t want to be singled out. I want people to see me as a human being and a person doing the job that they love to do.

“And they saw me as a police officer on the doorstep, not as somebody from a Muslim background and that’s what I wanted.”

Now the pair are hoping the hijab might be taken up by forces more widely.

Pc Rahouf said: “We’ve been invited to have conversations nationally to see if this can be incorporated as a standard hijab with police forces across the country.”

For Pc Amireddy, she believes she has already seen the potential power the hijab could have.

She said: “A friend of mine was in the pipeline of joining the police force and when I told her and she’d seen the hijab and she tried it on, she said ‘you know what, I’m really happy with this’.

“So for me, that was my proudest moment – that I’ve made a Muslim female happy with joining the police force.

“She doesn’t have to face those obstacles and barriers that I had to.”

North Yorkshire Police commended the two officers, saying they had “worked really hard” to “make this important change happen”.

A spokesperson said: “It’s really important for North Yorkshire Police to make sure that the uniform for each and every police officer is fit for purpose.

“Inclusion and diversity is a key agenda for the police service. We need to be more representative of the communities we serve, in order for us to be an inclusive workforce and deliver a better service to all of our communities.”

Read More: New Zealand police officer becomes first in force to wear Hijab in Uniform

The post Officer who designed police hijab aims to inspire Muslim women to join force appeared first on Faith Matters.

Categories: Met, Muslim women, News, North Yorkshire, Police force, Uzma Amireddy

New Zealand police officer becomes first in force to wear hijab in uniform

November 19, 2020 Article

The New Zealand Police force has incorporated a hijab into its official uniform, with the first officer to wear it reporting that it “feels great”.

Constable Zeena Ali had the opportunity to trial several versions of the hijab before she began her police training, with the item now an official elective item of uniform.

The force worked alongside apparel design researchers Deb Cumming and Nina Weaver, from Massey University School of Design Wellington, to create the hijab, with Constable Ali taking part in the development process.

Constable Ali, who is originally from Fiji but has lived in New Zealand since she was a child, said: “Police and the Massey design team have been really easy to work with to make adjustments to the hijab.”

Initial work to develop a police uniform hijab started in 2018, with the hijab formally approved as an elective item of uniform on November 4 this year.

Constable Ali said: “It feels great to be able to go out and show the New Zealand Police uniform hijab because I was able to take part in the design process.

“Having a police-branded hijab means women who may not have previously considered policing can do so now. It’s great how the police incorporated my religion and culture.”

The force added that Sikh men have been able to wear a New Zealand Police turban since 2008.

The post New Zealand police officer becomes first in force to wear hijab in uniform appeared first on Faith Matters.

Categories: Hijab, Muslim woman, New Zealand police, News, Turban

Rise in home working could lead to increase in prejudice, researchers warn

November 16, 2020 Article

Increased home working and fewer opportunities to socialise during the coronavirus pandemic is threatening to make society less tolerant of diversity, a report warns.

Reduced access to workplaces, leisure centres and other communal facilities is likely to make it much harder to form friendships that break down prejudices, the Woolf Institute said.

Without alternative opportunities for social mixing, its researchers believe this will lead directly to an increase in prejudice.

The research centre, based in Cambridge, is launching the results of a two-year study, which saw 11,701 adults surveyed about their attitudes towards diversity in England and Wales.

The report, How We Get Along, suggests that there is an emerging consensus that diversity is a positive thing, but that change has occurred too quickly.

More than half (53%) agree that ethnic diversity is good for society, 46% believe the same of migrants and 41% believe the same of religious diversity.

However, 60% of respondents said they feel the number of migrants in Britain has risen too quickly over the past decade, half believe ethnic diversity has increased too quickly and 43% believe the same of religious diversity.

The findings also suggests that negative beliefs about religions such as Islam continue to be widely held.

Religious prejudice, particularly towards Muslims, is the “final frontier” for diversity as people still appear willing to express negative attitudes.

The report authors are concerned that Covid-19 will make people become less tolerant, as it reduces their opportunities to make friends outside of their ethnic, religious or national groups.

Workplaces provide opportunities to create “shared goals, break down stereotypes and foster positive attitudes”, with the report finding that those without work are twice as likely to have no friends outside their own ethnicity, nationality and religion.

Dr Ed Kessler, founder director of the Woolf Institute, said: “As people are forced to work from home during Covid, there is a risk that they go back into isolated silos.

“Creating new opportunities for friendships should be a key ingredient of public policy.”

While overall trends are positive, attitudes towards religious diversity were markedly less so, suggesting religion is a “red line” for many people in England and Wales.

The polling found less than half (44%) of people would be comfortable with a close relative marrying a Muslim.

This compares to around seven in 10 respondents feeling comfortable with a loved one marrying an Asian or black person.

However, the data also suggest that a majority of Muslims had the same negative marriage attitudes towards Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish and Sikh people and those of no faith.

Dr Hargreaves said: “The good news is that there is a strong consensus in our findings that diversity is good for our country, whether we look at ethnicity, migration or religion. It is, however, also clear that, of these three forms of diversity, acceptance of religious diversity lags significantly behind.

“Being Muslim, in particular, appears to remain a “trigger” for prejudice, making religion a ‘final frontier’ for prejudice in England and Wales.”

Overall, women, younger people, Remain, Labour and Liberal Democrat voters appear to be more positive towards ethnic and religious diversity in Britain.

People living in more ethnically and religiously diverse communities were more likely to hold negative attitudes.

Remain, Labour and Liberal Democrat voters showed more positive attitudes towards migrants in Britain.

Attitudes towards migrants were more negative everywhere outside of London except for the south east, which the authors said may be a “regrettable bad news story from the provinces” for multicultural Londoners.

People in the North West were the least likely to have ethnically diverse friendships, and were 54% more likely than Londoners to only have friends from the same ethnic background.

Those in the North East were the least likely to have any non-British friends, and were two-and-a-half times as likely as Londoners to only be friends with British people.

The post Rise in home working could lead to increase in prejudice, researchers warn appeared first on Faith Matters.

Categories: Corona Virus, Diversity, Faiths, Home Working, marriage, Muslim, News, prejudice

European leaders say collaboration key in anti-terror fight

November 10, 2020 Article

French President Emmanuel Macron said that extremist attacks are a “European reality” and the European Union must tighten the screws on weak spots like external borders and the internet.

The calls follow two deadly extremist attacks in France and another in Austria in recent weeks.

Mr Macron’s remarks came after he, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, and the leaders of the EU’s executive and political arms held a video conference to discuss anti-terrorism strategy.

The group also addressed journalists, a mix of voices intended to underscore the need for collaboration to defeat terrorism.

The response to terrorism and radicalisation must be “common, coordinated and rapid” with “methodic” work in the weeks ahead, before a meeting of European heads of state in December, Macron said.

Extremist attacks have bloodied numerous EU countries over the years. Mr Macron noted that on Friday, France will mark the fifth anniversary of the Paris attacks that killed 130 people at a music hall and cafes on November 13, 2015.

The French leader stressed the need to develop a shared database and improved police cooperation, and said he wants a “deep reform” of how the external borders of Europe’s visa-free travel area are policed, a plan he made public last week.

“All weaknesses at the external border or in one member state is a security risk for all members,” Mr Macron said.

He additionally wants to get “terrorist content” pulled from the internet within an hour of its appearance, “something that must absolutely be put in place in the weeks ahead”.

Interior ministers from EU member nations are scheduled to meet on Friday about how to accelerate and improve anti-terrorism work in progress, said European Council President Charles Michel, who attended Tuesday’s video conference along with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

The EU’s national leaders will review the situation at a December meeting, Mr Michel said.

The conference came a week after a man who officials said had tried to join the Islamic State group shot four people dead in Vienna before police shot and killed him. The shooting has strengthened calls in Austria for a crackdown on Islamic extremism.

In France last month, an Islamic extremist killed three people in a church in the French city of Nice, and another extremist beheaded a teacher near Paris because he had shown his students cartoons of Islam’s prophet for a discussion about freedom of expression.

As a result of the attacks, Mr Macron last week proposed tighter controls on the EU’s external borders, more coordinated policing inside the bloc’s visa-free zone and changes to EU migration policy.

Read more: French leader decries Islamist terror attack against teacher

French militant group and mosque to close after teacher’s killing

The post European leaders say collaboration key in anti-terror fight appeared first on Faith Matters.

Categories: Emmanuel Macron, Eu member nations, European Union, Extremist attacks, News

French Muslims protect church in gesture of peace after Nice attack

November 6, 2020 Article

A group of French Muslims decided to stand guard outside their town’s cathedral to protect it and show solidarity with Catholic churchgoers.

Muslim residents in the southern French town of Lodeve organised the initiative as a gesture of peace after a deadly Islamic extremist attack on a church in the French city of Nice.

They stood guard outside the Lodeve cathedral for the All Saints’ holiday weekend, and hope to do the same for Christmas.

The cathedral’s priest and churchgoers welcomed the gesture, which also comes amid tensions between France and the Muslim world.

French-born Muslim Elyazid Benferhat said his stomach turned when he heard about the attack in Nice.

A self-described man of peace and pragmatism, Mr Benferhat and a friend gathered a group of young Muslim men to stand guard outside their town’s cathedral.

Parishioners at the 13th-century church were deeply touched. The parish priest said their gesture gave him hope in a time of turmoil.

Mr Benferhat identified himself as “more French than anything”. While his mother was born in Algeria, he was born in France and grew up speaking only French.

“But I am also Muslim… and we have seen Islamophobia in this country, and terrorism,” he said.

“In recent years, I’ve had a pit in my stomach,” because every time Islamic extremist violence strikes France, he said, French Muslims face new stigmatisation, even though “we had nothing to do with it”.

He called the beheading of a teacher near Paris last month an act of “unbelievable, unprecedented cruelty”.

Then when three people were killed last Thursday in the Notre Dame Basilica in Nice, Mr Benferhat said he was so sickened that he wanted to do something “so that everyone wakes up”.

Mr Benferhat, who works for French oil company Total and coaches at a local football club, talked to a Muslim friend who was in Nice that day. He said: “We had this idea. We needed to do something beyond paying homage to the victims. We said, we will protect churches ourselves.”

They recruited volunteers among their friends and at his football club, and guarded the church that night and again for Sunday mass. He said they also co-ordinated with local police, after France’s government promised to increase security at sensitive religious sites.

“It’s very good, these young people who are against violence,” said the cathedral’s priest, Luis Iniguez.

When a local newspaper published a photo of parishioners posing with their Muslim guards, the priest hung it inside the Gothic cathedral, which serves as an anchor for town life. “People were happy to see that,” he said.

The small-town gesture drew national attention, and with it, online invective from some far-right voices.

But Mr Benferhat said the response has been “90% positive”.

His group is considering how to take the idea forward, and would like to do it again for Christmas, and for other towns to follow Lodeve’s lead. But for now all religious services in France are banned at least until December 1 to try to slow the fast-rising coronavirus infections.

Whatever he does next, he said “it will come from the heart”.

Read More: New arrests by French investigators probing church attack in Nice

French militant group and mosque to close after attack on Samuel Paty

Suspect in French beheading terror attack was Chechen teenager

The post French Muslims protect church in gesture of peace after Nice attack appeared first on Faith Matters.

Categories: All Saints, Catholic, French Muslims, Lodeve, News, Nice, Samuel Paty

Network of Khatme Nabuwat Supporters Involved in Anti-Macron Protests

November 5, 2020 Article

On the 30th of October, a rally of about a hundred protestors rounded on the French Embassy in Central London and conducted a ‘sit-in’ around the bounds of the Embassy. The demonstrators, it seems, had traveled to London to shower the Embassy with chants and raised fists in the air. It was a show of force and rage against the comments of Macron, who had defended the fundamental principle of free speech, in defending the right for Charlie Hebdo to publish cartoons about the Prophet Muhammad. Macron had also subsequently made numerous statements delineating the Government of France from the actions of the Charlie Hebdo publication and even expressly stated that France has “no problem” with the religion of Islam that is practised by over 1.7 billion people. However, none of the context and nuances of the French premier mattered to the demonstrators in the video below. Their rage is clearly evident in the video, much of it looking like it was stage managed by a core handful of people.

What is clear from the footage below is that many of the demonstrators were a mix of people of South Asian heritage and many seemed to follow the rehearsed chants of a handful of agitators who were repeatedly and aggressively shouting slogans with their fists in the air. We will come back to these slogans later as we believe that public order offences were conducted by some of the demonstrators and we have noted the times in the video when we believe they took place. 

The Link to Khatme Nabuwat (KN)

Khatme Nabuwat is a loose affiliation of people at a global level whose primary aim is to defend the honour and integrity of Prophet Muhammad, by placing him as a central figure in their lives. They see themselves as ‘defenders against blasphemy’ which we have long said, is affecting parts of Barelwi Muslim communities, not just in the UK, but at a global level. Khatme Nabuwat networks feed off themselves and are therefore a sporadic modern day version of the Spanish Inquisition, where anyone seen to question the divinity or events around Prophet Muhammad, become legitimate targets for intimidation, harassment and hate. Take for example, this incident where ‘Kill Ahmadis’ leaflets were reported to have been found in a South London mosque. It was reportedly authored by an ex-head of Khatme Nabuwat, with the leaflets sending shock waves and fear into the British Muslim Ahmadi community at the time.

Khatme Nabuwat’s constant obsession with Ahmadis, had led to targeted acts of intimidation against them, as a means of rallying others to their cause. This has meant threats and incitement against Ahmadi Muslims on the basis that they question the finality of Prophet Muhammad. This is fundamentally false or ‘fake news’, yet none of this matters, since the ‘blasphemy police’ and mob type behaviour of Khatme Nabuwat networks regard anyone who simply questions elements around the life of Prophet Muhammad, as fair game for violence. So not much has changed in their medievalist mindsets.

Anyone watching and listening to the video below may come to the conclusion that free speech comes with caveats and limitations as the speaker rants against the very values that give him the right to speak so openly. In other words, free speech is fine as long as nothing is directed towards Muhammad, which aptly demonstrates the sheer hypocrisy of these ‘blasphemy policing’ networks. But this is no laughing matter since the spread of such intolerance has impacts and we have seen how this very intolerance led to an asylum seeker in France using a meat cleaver against two people who happened to be outside the former offices of the Charlie Hebdo publication. Their crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time, whilst they had a smoke.

The perpetrator of these attempted murders was Ali Hassan, who left Pakistan when he was 15 and who entered Europe illegally. Hassan put out a video prior to the attack in which he explained that he was from Kotli Qazi in Pakistan and he cited his family lineage and then put out an emotional defence of Muhammad on the back of the cartoon reprints by Charlie Hebdo. These reprints coincided with the trial of fourteen people alleged to be accomplices of the initial Charlie Hebdo attackers in 2015.

The fact is that Hassan came from a Barelwi Muslim background, who have mainly been influenced by Sufi traditions and who have taken a much more spiritual approach to faith. However, the issue of ‘blasphemy’ and the defence of the Prophet has significantly shifted members from this Muslim grouping towards harder and more extreme beliefs. One of these beliefs is that threats and violence are legitimate in the defence of the reputation of Muhammad. This is particularly depressing given that Barelwi Muslim communities by enlarge, have been more spiritually and religiously flexible in their interpretation of Islamic theology and traditions. 

Blasphemy linkages

The brutal attack in Paris by Hassan cannot be seen to be in isolation. It is part of a wider ideology, which at its core is built on the need to use threats and force against people merely perceived to be blasphemous. It is simply now reaching a murderous form in European states, even though the history of blasphemy in Pakistan, has seen people brutally murdered by mobs on the mere allegation that the victim questioned some aspect of Muhammad or his life.

Which brings us back to the video below. At 14:16 mins into the video – demonstrators are seen to specifically mention the ideology of Khatme Nabuwat and to rouse the crowd on the back of these chants outside of the French Embassy in London. Worst still, at 22:38 mins into the video, a number of the demonstrators are led to chant “Death to Macron” – (Macron Murdabad). These actions we believe, are public order offences and may well fall into incitement, which need to be reviewed by the Metropolitan Police Service (Met), given the public affirmation of threats to the well-being of the French President. 

Words and actions have consequences. At the very least, the Met need to assess the video for any criminal actions. Sadly, the issue of extremism based on perceived blasphemy is not going away for some time to come.

Read More: French militant group and mosque to close after teacher’s killing

The post Network of Khatme Nabuwat Supporters Involved in Anti-Macron Protests appeared first on Faith Matters.

Categories: Ahmadi Muslims, Ahmadis, Ali Hassan, Blasphemy, Charlie Hebdo, Emanuel Macron, France, French Embassy, Khatme Nabuwat, News, Prophet Muhammad

Vienna attacker had previous terrorism conviction

November 3, 2020 Article

Five people including an assailant have died and 17 others are wounded after a shooting in the heart of Vienna hours before a coronavirus lockdown started, Austrian authorities said.

The dead attacker was a 20-year-old Austrian-North Macedonian dual national who had a previous terror conviction.

Two men and two women died from their injuries after the attack on Monday evening, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said. The suspected attacker was shot and killed by police.

Vienna’s hospital service said seven people are in life-threatening condition after the attack, the Austrian news agency APA reported. In total, 17 people are being treated in hospital, with gunshot wounds and cuts.

“It is now confirmed that yesterday’s attack was clearly an Islamist terror attack,” Mr Kurz said. “It was an attack out of hatred — hatred for our fundamental values, hatred for our way of life, hatred for our democracy in which all people have equal rights and dignity.”

Interior minister Karl Nehammer later said that the dead assailant, who had roots in the Balkan nation of North Macedonia, had a previous conviction under a law that punishes membership of terrorist organisations.

The attacker, named as Kujtim Fejzulai, was sentenced to 22 months in prison in April 2019 because he had tried to travel to Syria to join the so-called Islamic State group. He was granted early release in December under juvenile law.

Fifteen house searches have taken place and several people have been arrested, Mr Nehammer said, adding that the attacker “was equipped with a fake explosive vest and and an automatic rifle, a handgun and a machete to carry out this repugnant attack on innocent citizens”.

Authorities are still trying to determine whether further attackers are on the run. People in Vienna were urged to stay at home if possible on Tuesday and children did not have to go to school. Some 1,000 police officers were on duty in Vienna on Tuesday morning.

Among those wounded in the attack was a police officer, said Mr Nehammer. The 28-year-old was in hospital but was no longer in a life-threatening condition.

The shooting began shortly after 8pm on Monday near Vienna’s main synagogue as many people were enjoying a last night of open restaurants and bars before a month-long coronavirus lockdown, which started at midnight.

Vienna police chief Gerhard Puerstl said the attacker was killed at 8.09pm.

Mr Kurz said: “We are victims of a despicable terror attack in the federal capital.”

His government on Tuesday ordered three days of official mourning, with flags on public buildings to be flown at half-mast until Thursday.

Unverified footage posted on social media showed a gunman walking through the streets, apparently shooting at people at random, wounding several.

Rabbi Schlomo Hofmeister said he saw at least one person shoot at people sitting outside at bars in the street below his window near the city’s main synagogue.

“They were shooting at least 100 rounds just outside our building,” he said. “All these bars have tables outside. This evening is the last evening before the lockdown.”

Authorities said residents have uploaded 20,000 videos of the attack to police.

Read more: Suspect in French beheading horror was Chechen teenager

New arrest by French investigators probing church attack in Nice

The post Vienna attacker had previous terrorism conviction appeared first on Faith Matters.

Categories: Islamic State, Islamist terrorism, Kujtim Fejzulai, News, North Macedonia, Syria, Vienna Attacker

New arrest by French investigators probing church attack in Nice

October 30, 2020 Article

Detectives investigating an attack by a Tunisian man who killed three people in a Nice church have a second suspect in custody, as France heightens its security alert amid religious and geopolitical tensions around cartoons mocking the Muslim Prophet Muhammad.

Tunisian anti-terrorism authorities have opened an investigation into an online claim that the attack was staged by a previously unknown Tunisian extremist group.

Muslims held more anti-France protests across the Middle East and beyond on Friday, while mourners placed flowers, messages and candles at the entrance to the Notre Dame Basilica in the French Riviera city where Thursday’s knife attack took place.

The attacker, Ibrahim Issaoui, was seriously wounded by police and taken to hospital in life-threatening condition, authorities said. Anti-terrorism prosecutors in France and Tunisia are investigating.

The new suspect is a 47-year-old man believed to have been in contact with the attacker the night before the attack, according to a judicial official.

A substitute prosecutor at the Tunisian anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office, Mohsen Dali, told the Associated Press a claim of responsibility came in an online post saying the attack was staged by a group called Al Mehdi of Southern Tunisia, previously unknown to Tunisian authorities.

The victims included 55-year-old Vincent Loques, a father of two who was the church’s sacristan, in charge of its holy objects, according to local broadcaster France-Bleu.

Another was a 44-year-old mother of three from Brazil named Simone who had studied cooking in Nice and helped poor communities, France-Bleu said.

In an interview broadcast on Friday with Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya TV, the attacker’s mother said she was shocked by the events.

She said she was surprised to hear her son was in France and had no idea what he was planning. “You don’t know the French language, you don’t know anyone there, you’re going to live alone there, why, why did you go there?” she said she told him over the phone when he arrived.

His brother told Al-Arabiya that Issaoui had informed the family he would sleep in front of the church, and sent them a photograph showing him at the cathedral. “He didn’t tell me anything,” he said.

A neighbour said he knew the assailant when he was a mechanic and held various other odd jobs, and had shown no signs of radicalisation.

France’s anti-terrorism prosecutor said the suspect is a Tunisian born in 1999 who reached the Italian island of Lampedusa, a key landing point for migrants crossing in boats from North Africa, on September 20, and travelled to Bari, a port city in southern Italy, on October 9. It is not clear when he arrived in Nice.

Tunisians fleeing a virus-battered economy make up the largest contingent of migrants landing in Italy this year. Italian media reported that from Lampedusa, where Issaoui was one of 1,300 arriving migrants on September 20, he was placed with 800 others on a virus quarantine boat in Puglia.

After the two-week quarantine, he received a notice that he was being expelled from Italy for illegal entry and was given seven days to leave the country, according to Milan daily Corriere della Sera.

Italy’s interior minister confirmed the suspect was ordered to leave Italy on October 9. Luciana Lamorgese said he was not flagged by either Tunisian authorities or intelligence agencies.

The attack was the third in less than two months that French authorities have attributed to Muslim extremists, including the beheading of a teacher who had shown caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in class after the images were re-published by satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

The images deeply offended many Muslims, and protesters burned French flags, stomped on portraits of President Emmanuel Macron and called for boycotts of French products at demonstrations in Pakistan, India and Afghanistan.

Mr Macron said he would immediately increase the number of soldiers deployed to protect French schools and religious sites from around 3,000 to 7,000. Schools remain open during a nationwide lockdown that started on Friday to stem the spread of coronavirus, but religious services are cancelled.

Nice imam Otmane Aissaoui condemned the “terrible act of terror, of savagery, of human insanity that plunges us into sadness, shock and pain” which had again put French Muslims in the spotlight.

The attacker “hit brothers and sisters who were praying to their lord”, he told the Associated Press. “It’s as if a mosque was touched… I am deeply Christian today.”

Read more: Students helped killer find teacher who was beheaded, says French prosecutor

French leader decries terrorist attack against teacher

The post New arrest by French investigators probing church attack in Nice appeared first on Faith Matters.

Categories: Charlie Hebdo, Emmanuel Macron, France terrorist attack, Ibrahim Issaoui, Macron, News, Pakistan, Tunisian national

Two arrested over wartime killing of 78 civilians

October 27, 2020 Article

Two people have been detained in Bosnia on suspicion of taking part in the killing of at least 78 civilians during the 1992-95 war.

The two men were apprehended in Banja Luka, the main town in the Bosnian Serb-run part of the country, according to the prosecutor’s office.

They are suspected of crimes against humanity over the June 1992 killings in the north-western village of Velagici.

Bosnian Serbs slaughtered imprisoned Bosniak civilians, who are mainly Muslims, outside the school building with automatic weapons.

The victims’ bodies were later driven away in trucks and dumped in a mass grave that was exhumed in 1996.

More than 100,000 people died during the war in Bosnia, which erupted when Bosnian Serbs rebelled over the country’s independence from the former Yugoslavia and moved to carve up a mini-state of their own, expelling Bosniaks and Croats from the territory.

The post Two arrested over wartime killing of 78 civilians appeared first on Faith Matters.

Categories: Arrested, Banja Luka, Bosnia, Bosniak, News, Velagici

Students helped killer find teacher who was beheaded, says French prosecutor

October 21, 2020 Article

The 18-year-old suspected killer of a French teacher who showed caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in class paid students to help him identify the victim, France’s terrorism prosecutor has said.

Prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard said a 14-year-old and a 15-year-old are among seven people who appeared before an investigating magistrate on accusations of complicity in murder in relation with a terrorist undertaking, and criminal conspiracy.

The suspect in Friday’s killing of teacher Samuel Paty, who was attacked and beheaded near Paris, offered students at the school 300 to 350 euros (£267 to £311) to help him pick out, Mr Ricard said during a news conference on Wednesday.

“The investigation has established that the perpetrator knew the name of the teacher, the name of the school and its address, yet he did not have the means to identify him,” the prosecutor said.

“That identification has only been possible with the help of students from the same school.

“That’s why the anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office has decided to prosecute two under-18 minors whose implication in the identification of the victim for the killer has appeared to be conclusive.”

A terror investigation is under way into Mr Paty’s killing.

Authorities have identified the killer as Abdoullakh Anzorov., an 18-year-old Moscow-born Chechen refugee who was later shot dead by police.

The surviving suspects also include a student’s father who posted videos on social media that called for mobilisation against the teacher and an Islamist activist who helped the man disseminate the virulent messages, which named Mr Paty and gave the school’s address, Mr Ricard said.

Two more men are accused of having helped the attacker by accompanying him when he bought weapons including a knife and an airsoft gun that were found near the 18-year-old’s body, according to the prosecutor.

Another suspect had close contacts with the attacker and endorsed radical Islamism, Mr Ricard said.

The French government issued an order on Wednesday morning to dissolve domestic militant Islamic group the Collective Cheikh Yassine.

Government spokesman Gabriel Attal said it was “implicated, linked to Friday’s attack” and was used to promote anti-republican hate speech.

Other groups will be dissolved “in the coming weeks” for similar reasons, Mr Attal said.

Named after an assassinated leader of the Palestinian Hamas, Collective Cheikh Yassine was founded in the early 2000s by an Islamist activist who is among the seven people accused of being accomplices to the attacker.

Mr Attal also confirmed the government ordered a mosque in the north-east Paris suburb of Pantin to close for six months.

It is being punished for relaying the angry father’s message on social media.

Authorities say it has long had an imam following the Salafist path, a rigorous interpretation of the Muslim holy book.

A national memorial event is scheduled to be held Wednesday evening in the courtyard of the Sorbonne university.

Read More here: French militant group and mosque to close after killing

Suspect in French beheading was Chechen in origin

Demonstrations across France to mark the killing of Samuel Paty

The post Students helped killer find teacher who was beheaded, says French prosecutor appeared first on Faith Matters.

Categories: Abdoullakh Anzorov, France, militant Islamic group, News, Prophet Muhammad, Samuel Paty