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More than 50 physical and verbal attacks committed against Muslims in France

14 January 2015
4 minute read

The repercussions of last week’s terrorist attack in France are still reverberating worldwide. The French continue to feel threatened, the terrorists are praising each other, tens of thousands of Germans have taken to the streets, Germany’s eurosceptic party is arguing with itself, and the number of attacks against Muslims is rising in France.

The French continue to feel threatened

France continues to feel threatened despite the fact that the perpetrators of the terrorist attacks in which mainly Jewish people and journalists perished last week were ultimately caught. Police are still searching for as many as six more members of the terrorist cell.

The authorities have also mobilized thousands of men to protect Jewish properties throughout the country. The police investigation so far has revealed that the partner of one of the terrorists who was killed was crossing into Syria at the time of the attack.  

The assassins were praised by Islamist radicals from abroad today. A leading international terrorist figure, Mokhtar Belmokhtar of Algeria, expressed appreciation for the murderous attacks in Paris and also called on Muslims in Western countries to commit similar actions.

Humanists versus Pegida

Germany has called on Turkey to more effectively prevent extremists from traveling to Syria to join the Islamic State movement and other terrorist organizations. Ankara has responded that it is already doing the maximum in that regard.

Tens of thousands of Germans have taken to the streets in many towns to demonstrate either against the dissemination of Islam or in favor of an open society. According to police data, with the exception of Dresden, the opponents of the "Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West" (Pegida) have vastly outnumbered its proponents, with as many as 20 000 opponents of Pegida gathering in Munich alone; the Pegida supporters demonstrated in black armbands to remember the Charlie Hebdo victims.

German eurosceptics growing fractious

The eurosceptic political party Alternative for Germany (AfD) is undergoing internal dissension over the different positions taken by its various representatives on the issues of immigrants and Islam. While AfD dominated both the European and German elections with its demands to abolish the euro, during the state-level elections the party reached out to voters with an appeal for a harsher approach to cross-border crime and restrictions on immigration.

This shift has been confirmed by the fact that AfD party representatives have drawn closer to the Pegida ("Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West") movement, which has been holding regular demonstrations against Islam in Dresden and other cities. One such protest was attended by the head of the Brandenburg organization of AfD, Alexander Gauland.  

The head of the AfD organization in Saxony and the co-chair of the national party, Frauke Petry, said after negotiations with representatives of the Pegida movement that she sees programmatic agreement between the demands made by the AFD and Pegida. On the other hand, the national vice-chair of AfD, Hans-Olaf Henkel, has said he opposes collaborating with Pegida and criticizes the very concept of a "patriotic European".

Representatives of the AfD organization in Hamburg have taken a more restrained stance toward anti-Islamic rhetoric and have said they want to return to a program focused primarily on economic topics and Europe during February’s elections. They are concerned that speaking out against immigrants and Islam could threaten their chances of success.

The terrorist attack on the headquarters of the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo has sparked more division inside the party. Gauland said the assassinations confirm Pegida’s warning that Europe is Islamizing.

German MEP Bernd Lucke, a founding member of AfD, has refused to blame all Muslims for the attack. "A crime committed by two extremists cannot be attributed to an entire religious community, most of whose members are blameless, peace-loving people," he said.

Obama and Netanyahu

The US media are surprised that the march in Paris where other heads of state and government stood side by side with French President François Hollande was not attended by US President Barack Obama. The White House has acknowledged that it made a mistake by not sending a higher-level representative.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did participate in the demonstration; the Israeli press reports that at first Hollande did not want to him there so as to avoid reviving controversy around complicated Israeli-Palestinian relations. Netanyahu also irritated the French Government by calling on French Jews to emigrate to Israel after the attacks.

Fifty attacks on Muslims

Reportedly more than 50 anti-Muslim incidents have taken place outside of Paris since the attacks, including grenade-throwings and shootings, although most involved verbal insults and threats. The Anonymous hacker group has also allegedly succeeded in destroying a website run by French Islamists and is focusing on reporting Islamist Twitter profiles.
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