A rally against racism and xenophobia on 10 January drew tens of thousands of people in the eastern German city of Dresden, which has become the centre of anti-immigration protests organised by a new anti-Islam movement called PEGIDA. “We won’t permit that hate will divide us”, Dresden’s mayor Helma Orosz said in front of the 18th-century Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady).
Around 35,000 people attended the rally that was jointly organised by the state government of Saxony and the city of Dresden, officials said. The movement Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West (PEGIDA) is holding weekly rallies in Dresden. Chancellor Angela Merkel has condemned the anti-Muslim demonstrations, urging Germans to turn their backs on the movement and calling their organisers racists full of hatred.
MUSLIM MAN SAVES CUSTOMERS IN PARIS SUPERMARKET
A Muslim man hid a group of shoppers, one with a baby, in a basement cold storage room at the Hyper Cacher supermarket to shield them from the gunman, a report said on 11 January. Lassana Bathily, 24, a Muslim shop assistant originally from Mali, was praised for risking his own life to save those led to safety.
“When they came running down I opened the door of the fridge,” he told French TV. “Several came in with me. I turned off the light and the fridge. When I turned off the cold, I put them in. I closed the door. I told them to stay calm and I said ‘you stay quiet there, I’m going back out’.” City councillor Malik Yettou said that six people and a baby escaped the gunman by hiding there, while BFMTV put the number at about 15. The young man is being lauded as a hero on social media, and held up as a reminder of how wrong it is to demonise all Muslims in the wake of the attacks.
ATTACK ON FRENCH MUSLIMS SINCE CHARLIE HEBDO
France, home to one of Europe’s largest Muslim populations, witnesses several attacks on Muslims’ places of worship after Charlie Hebdo attack, despite universally and repeatedly condemning the attack.
According to media reports, the attacks have included gunshots fired at a mosque in Port-la-Nouvelleand a boar’s head and entrails were left outside an Islamic prayer centre in Corsica with a note: “Next time it will be one of your heads”, shots were fired overnight at a mosque in the western city of Le Mans, and a blast destroyed a kebab shop next to a mosque in the central town of Villefranche-sur-Saone.
MOSQUE ATTACKED IN GERMANY SECOND TIME
A mosque that is currently under construction, named Suleymaniye Mosque, in the German suburb of Dormagen was attacked once more after the first time attacked on 22 December, 2014, a report said on 11 January. The second attack in three weeks, anti-Muslim and racist slogans as well as a swastika were painted on the walls of the mosque. Turkey’s Dusseldorf consolate Alaattin Temur visited the mosque after the second attack and received information from the officials.
Condemning the racist and Islamophobic attack on the mosque, chairperson of the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs Prof. Dr. Nevzat Yasar Asikoglu said the first attack on the mosque took place on 20 December, 2014 and authorities were asked to take necessary steps to provide protection for the place of worship.
MILITANTS BLOW UP IMAM NAWAWI TOMB IN SYRIA
Nusra Front militants allegedly blew up the 13th century tomb of a revered Islamic scholar in southern Syria, Syrian state news agency SANA and monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said on 8 January. The mausoleum of Imam Nawawi is in Nawa in Deraa province near the Jordanian border, a town captured by groups fighting the Syrian government.
Muhy ud-Din Abu Zakariyyah Yahya ibn Sharaf al-Hizami an-Nawawi was born in the 631H (1233CE) in the village of Nawa, south of Damascus, Syria. Coming from Nawa, he is given the descriptive name of An-Nawawi.
SRI LANKA MUSLIMS WANT GOVT. THAT RESPECTS MINORITIES
The Sri Lankan Muslim Congress withdrew from the Rajapaksa’s government over the Christmas period bringing to the fore the expressed and unexpressed concerns of the Muslim community that makes up almost 10 per cent of the island’s population. Rauf Hakeem, Sri Lanka’s former Minister of Justice and the leader of the Sri Lankan Muslim Congress, said his party insists that the country should view their decision in the light of continued attacks on the Muslim communities and businesses, linked to the Sinhalese Buddhist national Bodu Bada Sena, which made it difficult for the party to continue as a constituent ally of the ruling majority-led coalition.
ERDOGAN SAYS UN SECURITY COUNCIL LACKS MUSLIM VOICE
More countries from across the world’s continents should be represented in the UN Security Council, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on 7 January. “The permanent members only represent Europe, America, and Asia,” Erdogan said during a ground-breaking ceremony of a new campus for Yildirim Beyazit University in Ankara. “There is no country representing the Muslim world.”
The UN Security Council consists of 15 members, with Russia, the UK, the US, France and China serving as the body’s five permanent members. The non-permanent members are elected for two-year terms by the UN General Assembly. Erdogan also reiterated that “the world is bigger than five,” in reference to the Security Council’s permanent members who can veto any substantive resolution. “The fate of all other countries across the world cannot depend on what the current permanent members will say,” he added.
BULGARIAN MOSQUE ATTACKED
A fire at the entrance of the Hudavendigar Mosque entrance in the capital of Plovdiv has been extinguished. In a statement from the police department, the mosque, known as the Friday mosque was targeted by attackers and attempted by arson. Eyewitnesses at the mosque entrance said that the attacker spilt fuel, and fled the scene after starting a fire. The fire was extinguished and the attacker was caught by police when trying to take fuel at a nearby petrol station.
Plovdiv District Prosecutor Office spokesman Galina Andreeva did not name the attacker, and said that he would be charged with damaging historical and cultural property as well as fuel theft.
ENNAHDA TO PARTICIPATE IN ESSID GOVT
The Shura Council of Tunisia’s Ennahda Movement on 10 January said that it would participate in the government now being formed by Tunisia’s new Prime Minister Habib Essid. “A majority of the members of the Shura Council voted for participation in the government of Habib Essid,” Fathi al-Ayadi, the head of the council said, following a meeting in the northeastern city of Hammamet.
He added that the executive office of the movement was assigned the job of coordinating with other parties and the Prime Minister on this participation and the distribution of ministerial portfolios. Ennahda won 69 seats in Tunisia’s parliament during the parliamentary election, which took place on October 26, of 2014. Its rival movement, Nidaa Tounes, won 86 seats in parliament.
EGYPT’S EX-PRESIDENT MORSI AIDE RELEASED ON HEALTH REASONS
A former aide to ousted Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood was released on 11 January for health reasons after 18 months in detention without charge, relatives said.
Khaled al-Qazzaz, Morsi’s former foreign affairs secretary, was arrested in July 2013 along with the elected president and eight other senior aides when the army removed the Brotherhood from power.
A public prosecutor told reporters on Sunday that Qazzaz was being released on health grounds. It is still not clear if Qazzaz, an Egyptian citizen, will be allowed to leave the country for Canada, where he holds permanent residence. Relatives said he was a member of the Freedom and Justice Party, the political wing of the Brotherhood, not a card-carrying member of the group.