Protestors berate prophet Muhammad at anti-Islam protest at Phoenix mosque
Protestors berate prophet Muhammad at anti-Islam protest at Phoenix mosque
Counter-demonstrators shouted “Go home Nazis” at the 200 anti-Islam protestors, some of whom were armed
More than 200 protesters, some armed, berated Islam and the prophet Muhammad outside an Arizona mosque on Friday in a protest denounced by counter-protesters who shouted “Go home Nazis”. The event was staged partly in response to an attack on a Muhammad cartoon contest held weeks earlier.
The event outside the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix was organised by an Iraq war veteran who posed online in an anti-Islam T-shirt and waving the US flag.
As the event got under way demonstrators on both sides screamed obscenities at each other as police in riot gear swiftly separated the two groups, each with about 250 people, using police tape and barricades.
“This is in response to the recent attack in Texas,” organizer Jon Ritzheimer wrote on his Facebook page announcing the event at a mosque targeted in part because the two Texas gunmen had worshipped there.
More than 900 people responded on the event’s Facebook page that they would take part in the demonstration. At the event itself, officers with riot helmets and gas masks formed a cordon for several blocks.
Among the anti-Islam protesters more than a dozen men in military clothing carried semi-automatic weapons. Others waved copies of caricatures of the Muhammad that were drawn at the Texas event.
Depictions of Muhammad, which can be seen by Muslims as blasphemous, have been a flashpoint for violence in Europe and the United States in recent months where those displaying or creating such images have been targeted by militants.
Meanwhile, anti-Muslim groups have been active in the US, buying ads and staging demonstrations characterizing Islam as violent, often citing the murderous brutality of Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.
The Phoenix mosque targeted on Friday has condemned such violence and hosted sermons criticizing militant Islamist groups such as Islamic State, al-Qaida and Boko Haram.
The president of the center had urged worshippers not to engage with the demonstrators. “We should remind ourselves that we do not match wrongness with wrongness, but with grace and mercy and goodness,” Usama Shami told worshippers during Friday prayers. While some counter-protesters outside the mosque responded to the anti-Islam protest with obscenities, others followed his advice and chanted: “Love your neighbor.”
In January gunmen killed 12 people at the Paris office of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in anger at the magazine’s cartoons featuring the prophet, and a similar attack was foiled in Texas on 3 May.
The pair of gunmen who opened fire near Dallas outside an exhibit of cartoons featuring Muhammad were shot dead by police without killing anyone. Leaders of the Phoenix Muslim community confirmed both gunmen had attended the mosque targeted in Friday’s demonstration.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/30/protestors-berate-prophet-muhammad-at-anti-islam-protest-at-phoenix-mosque
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