“I burn you, I burn the Koran”: the Pau mosque reeling from incendiary Islamophobic threats

Words are formidable weapons that can offend, terrify and haunt minds for a long time. Those contained in the anonymous letter addressed, on September 12, to the Pau mosque, chilled with fear those responsible for the sacred Muslim enclosure, especially since it was not by post that they were sent to them. reached… But hung on the front door of the place of worship!

Written in the black ink of hatred, they poured their venom onto the paper, through explicitly threatening and insulting sentences towards the Prophet Muhammad, one of which, highly flammable, caused a strong emotional shock: “I burn you, I burn the Koran.

Well in the stale and incendiary air of the times, conducive to the multiplication of odious burnings of the Holy Koran, notably in Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands, it was taken very seriously by those in charge of the mosque of Pau, who were, unfortunately, not at the end of their surprises…

Indeed, in the parking lot of the place of worship, another not very reassuring discovery awaited them: pages in Arabic, probably taken from a copy of the Koran, were scattered on the tar, after having been burned, alongside matches. “ It’s very worrying”reacted, dismayed, Abdeljalil El Ayoubi, vice-president of the Pau mosque, to such a scene which brought back bad memories.

“ We are not calm, we immediately imagine the worst “, he confided to France Bleu Béarn, adding: “ We tell ourselves that it can quickly become extreme, perhaps by burning the mosque, it has already happened in Bayonne”.

A shiver of fear runs through the Muslim community of Béarn, the former historic stronghold of King Henry IV, promulgator of the Edict of Nantes on religious tolerance, because this is not the first time that their mosque has been the target of Islamophobic threats. : “It already happened a few years ago, we received a letter but it didn’t go that far,” is sorry Abdeljalil El Ayoubi.

And continue by sounding the alarm: “ The Muslim community is stigmatized in the media, so people who have no perspective can act out. As French Muslims, we are worried.”

The leaders of the Pau mosque, who were assured of the support of the prefect of the department, filed a complaint and an investigation was immediately launched. They are now planning to install CCTV cameras.