Faizel Patel, Radio Islam News – 30-10-2019
A French Researcher and public law expert has told Radio Islam the coverage of a mosque attack in the US and France may have been muted because the suspect is white.
An 84-year-old man opened fire when the two victims, aged 74 and 78, found him trying to set fire to a mosque in Bayonne, France on Monday.
The victims were brought to a nearby hospital with serious injuries, while the suspected shooter, identified as Claude Sinke, was later arrested near his home- he also tried to set fire to a car outside the Mosque.
French researcher Rim Sarah says while the US is dealing with the Donald Trump impeachment, the coverage of the attack in that country and France was very low.
“The saddest part at least in France, even though we are obviously witnessing here the rise of far right extremism, our political elite are still debating how a Muslim woman should dress or not. It’s just indecent, so is it because the suspect is white. Unfortunately I think you are right. Yes there is a double standards in the way we treat that kind of information.”
Sarah says there is also a debate about Islam’s place in France.
“It’s a distraction to avoid the fact that our country is facing now for almost a year a very serious social crisis with Macron’s very unpopular reform. So I think it’s very sad that our president in today’s time, we are living in a crisis where we see populism rising and racism and far right extremism and he’s not taking a proper stand.”
There have been intermittent attacks on mosques in France since 2007, when 148 Muslim headstones in a national military cemetery near Arras were smeared with anti-Islamic slurs and a pig’s head was placed among them.
In June this year, a gunman wounded an imam in a shooting at a mosque in the northwestern city of Brest, but police ruled out a terror motive.
Listen to the interview with Rim Sarah
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