Toulouse imams: “Victims of terrorism are Muslims’

On All Saints Day, imams and their families participated on Sunday, November 1 in the mass in a Catholic church in an immigrant district of Toulouse, denouncing killers “without spirit or reason”, only days after the jihadist attack in Nice which had resulted in three deaths and the day after the attack on an Orthodox priest in Lyon.

“These people without mind or reason want another interpretation [of the Quran]. We firmly reject it,” said one of the imams of the Al-Rahma mosque, Lahouary Siali, alongside the parish priest of the Church of the Holy Spirit in Bagatelle, The Huffington Post reported.

The imams echoed the declaration by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan his most recent speech: “European Muslims are systematically discriminated against, their rights and freedoms are taken away from them.”

Erdogan also declared that politically and economically, Turkey will be among the greatest in the world.

“It is not easy to make these tyrants who owe their strength to the exploitation of societies through oppression, bloodshed, deception and pressure, accept that the rules of the game have changed. They have not succeeded in taking Turkey hostage by the tutelage, they have not been able to bring it to its knees through terrorism, they have not been able to destroy it by the coup d’etat, they have not been able to put handcuffs on it by threats, siege and embargo and they will not succeed in defeating it by the economy,” the Turkish president said, according to TRT.

🔴 DERNIERE MINUTE | Président #Erdogan : "Les musulmans européens sont systématiquement victimes de discrimination, leurs droits et libertés leur sont enlevés"

— ANADOLU AGENCY (FR) (@aa_french) November 1, 2020

French Prime Minister Jean Castex during an interview on TF1 in a particularly tense context, spoke out on the issues of Islamism and reconfinement. Castex tried to defend his government’s initiatives.

The Prime Minister began by stating the obvious: “An enemy has declared war on France […] It is called political and radical Islamism.” Because of that, the government intends to provide “operational and repressive responses”. He admitted that security forces currently foil at least one Islamist terror attack per month in France.