Navigate to News section

French Mosques Targeted Following Paris Attack

Vigilante-style anti-Muslim violence the worst response to deadly shooting

by
Stephanie Butnick
January 08, 2015
French police forensic scour the scene of an explosion at a kebab shop damaged following an explosion near a mosque, on January 8, 2015, in Villefranche-sur-Saone, eastern France. (JEAN-PHILIPPE KSIAZEK/AFP/Getty Images)
French police forensic scour the scene of an explosion at a kebab shop damaged following an explosion near a mosque, on January 8, 2015, in Villefranche-sur-Saone, eastern France. (JEAN-PHILIPPE KSIAZEK/AFP/Getty Images)

In the wake of yesterday’s terrorist attack on the Paris offices of satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, in which 12 people were killed by two Kalashnikov-wielding gunmen with extremist ties who remain at large, thousands gathered in public spaces throughout France, uniting in mourning and solidarity. Others in France evidently took a far less productive tack, attacking mosques in three French cities.

Daily Intel reports:

One of the attacks took place in Port La Nouvelle, in southern France, where an unknown assailant fired shots at a prayer room at a local mosque. Another mosque, in Le Mans, was attacked with grenades, while a restaurant near yet another one was bombed in Villefrance-sur-Saone.

By the twisted logic of these latest attacks’ perpetrators, violently targeting mosques at random is somehow an appropriate, sane response to a deadly act of terror by Muslim extremists. They couldn’t be more wrong.

Stephanie Butnick is chief strategy officer of Tablet Magazine, co-founder of Tablet Studios, and a host of the Unorthodox podcast.